Teachers? When Will We Learn?

George Lightbourn:

How did this happen? How did conservatives come to find themselves glaring across the battleground at tens of thousands of Wisconsin's teachers? In the long run, the confrontation is not one that is likely to end well for conservatives.

Too often conservatives fall into the trap of equating teachers with the teachers' unions. While hostility toward the unions might be justified - after all, they have reflexively opposed conservative school reform ideas for decades and have inappropriately intruded into classroom activities with the passive concurrence of union supported school board members - this hostility should not be transferred to teachers themselves. Anyone who ignores the distinction between teachers and teachers' unions does so at their own peril.

There are several arguments supporting this reasoning; I offer up two of the better ones here.

First, there's no getting around it, teachers are the people who need to, well, teach. While a handful of misguided teachers might drag their ideology into the classroom, most do not. When the bell rings, nearly all teachers set about doing their best to attain the same goal espoused by every educational reformer: to improve the performance of the students in their charge. Some are better at their job than others, but these are not malicious people.

Posted by Jim Zellmer at April 6, 2012 1:10 AM
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