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Sunday, April 7, 2013

What exactly are Jeb Bush and the school reform movement blaming teachers unions for?

Jeb Bush, his right hand woman Patricia Levesque, his spokeswoman Jarym Emhoff, Senate President Don Geatz and Representative Carlos Trujillo have all attacked the teachers union in the last few weeks for being against their corporate reform of public education. Some of them have even implied that the PTA and various other parent organizations and civil rights groups who stand with the union on most issues have become puppets of the unions.

I just don’t understand what they are blaming the union for. Shouldn’t we all be against the corporate takeover of public education? Shouldn’t we all be against charters and voucher programs that give students a substandard education? Shouldn’t we all be against the erosion of democracy, which is what happens when you take control of public education away from duly elected representatives and give it to corporate boards? Finally shouldn’t we want reforms to be based on evidence and facts, not Jeb Bush’s gut and what’s best for the bottom line of his friends and supporters who by the way will profit off of his reforms.

The Union has become their boogeyman. A word they use to scare and inflame their base. Blaming the union for problems in education especially here in Florida where the republicans have had total control of education for the last 15 years would be laughable if it wasn’t so maddening that some ill informed people actually are buying into the talking point.

Think about it friends, this is a right to work state, people are not forced to join the unions, heck teachers can’t even strike, what real power to force reform or changes do they have. All they can do is educate the public about what is happening not that Bush, Geatz and Trujllo listen to them anyway. 

No, they only listen to the corporations and special interests who pay their salaries or who donate to their campaigns. They not our children and definitely not our teachers are whom they owe their allegiances to.

And before you think I am a shill for the union, type union into the search box, few have been as critical about the union as I have been.


To read more, check out this post in Scathing Purple Musings, it follows the money. http://bobsidlethoughtsandmusings.wordpress.com/2013/04/07/jeb-bushs-foundations-falsely-allign-parent-opposition-with-unions-while-raking-in-cash-from-edu-corps/

2 comments:

  1. They are relying on an old worn out narrative that got them this far, and ain't working so well anymore. You can fool some people, just some. Parents, community members, and taxpayers irrespective of ideology, see the facts and they don't like what they see.

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  2. I can tell you what I blame the unions for.

    Where were the unions when standardized testing was encroaching upon the educational system and numbing the brains of American kids?

    Where were the unions when the arts were being slashed?

    Where were the unions when the schools of education were over-run by mindless pabulum, giving us coteries of politically-correct administrators that are detached from reality?

    Where were the unions when these mindless administrators destroyed educational standards and discipline, particularly in the inner city schools?

    Grousing, I guess. Certainly not doing more than complaining.

    But when we see threats of 3% cuts to pension plans, or 3% increases in pension contributions? Then the unions really start making hay. It might as well be .03% cuts in this or that, and the real uproar begins. Education be damned. Let our kids go to hell, so long as I have my pension, to quote Dostoyevsky.

    Forgive me, but somehow I doubt that we would see any fuss at all if the districts around the country started sacrificing children to Molech, so long as it was accompanied by a 5% *increase* in the pension. I can imagine teachers rationalizing to themselves that sacrificing children to Molech does much more to prepare them for real life than doing the same damn quadratic equation 100 times. And the irony is they might be right.


    Let me say that I don't like the Bill Gates charter approach. I think it's a looming poison that will make education more miserably than it is today. But I truly cringe when I see some teacher pretending that our problems somehow all started with the Charters and the fake reformers and the vouchers. It was the Fat-Toad Union Approach that broke the system to the point where such "solutions" could be rolled out. The only reason why this is happening is that the Fat Toad Unions have run out of excuses and they have run out of credibility. Or perhaps this might be the first instance in history, quoth Dickens, of smoke without fire, of reaping without sewing.

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