Via Jerry P. Becker:

******************************
From the St. Louis Dispatch, Wednesday, February 23, 2011. See http://www.stltoday.com/news/local/columns/bill-mcclellan/article_d3231999-58be-5a4b-8c72-ccfcdfc4cbe9.html?sms_ss=email&at_xt=4d6dc7411f2e1c4e,0
******************************
Bottled water in ... school teachers out

By Bill McClellan
 
The charming thing about life is its unexpectedness. Bottled water, for instance. How did anybody come up with that? And what did the boss say when the idea was first proposed?

"You want to do what, Jenkins?"

"I want to put water in bottles, sir."

"What would you do with these bottles of water, Jenkins?"

"We'd sell them, sir."

"Let me make sure I understand, Jenkins. You want to take water - regular, tasteless water, the kind you can get out of the tap - and you want to put that water into bottles and sell it."

"Yes, sir."

It makes no sense, but it worked. Bottled water now costs more than gasoline.

Ornamental oranges are even stranger. They look like real oranges, but they're inedible. Why would that be considered an improvement? How would you present that idea to your bosses?

Televised poker is another oddity. Why would anybody watch other people play cards?

But the strangest thing of all, the thing that years ago would have seemed inconceivable to me, is the denigration of teachers.

When I was a kid, teachers were the ultimate authority figures. They were thought of as cops, but smarter.

Although they were greatly respected, teachers did not make a lot of money. They were in the middle of the middle class. They made roughly what cops, electricians and factory workers made. In fact, most teachers worked summer jobs.

Of course, in those days, baseball players worked winter jobs. Here is a strange tidbit from my youth - my seventh-grade teacher worked at the local Sears store during the summer. Sammy Esposito, a player on the White Sox, worked at the same store in the winter.

Think about that - a baseball player and a seventh-grade teacher sharing a job.

Of course, ballplayers have zoomed up the economic ladder. The average salary for a major league player on opening day rosters last year was $3.3 million.

Teachers are still in the middle of the middle class.

Yet they have become whipping boys and girls. Incompetent, lazy, selfish and so on.

How did this happen? Well, they formed unions. But so did baseball players, and while the baseball players have seen their salaries soar, the teachers unions have only been able to keep teachers safely in the middle class.

Nevertheless, you'd think they were enemies of the state. They're demonized. You can see it happening right now in Wisconsin. The governor has declared war on public employee unions, and the most visible of these public employees are the teachers.

The crazy thing about it is, it's not a crazy strategy.

We are seeing a backlash against all public employees. Part of it is human nature. I understand that part. Public employees have pensions. Fewer and fewer of us in the private sector do. Also, public employees are less likely to be laid off in hard times. So employees in the private sector get jealous and angry. We're taxpayers, we say, as if public employees aren't.

Furthermore, we are in the midst of a financial crisis. Government is broke. Public employee pensions are a big part of this. Just look at St. Louis.

So sure, something has to be done. Reasonable people ought to be able to understand that.

But the animosity toward teachers, that's the part I don't get. They do important work. Vital work. They educate our children. That's a difficult job. In some schools, it's nearly an impossible job. Teachers are supposed to overcome all sorts of obstacles that are not of their doing - poverty, violence, the gangster culture, absent or neglectful parents.

I dare say most of us couldn't make it a week in many schools.

But it has become increasingly popular these days to scapegoat teachers. For that matter, I get lots of e-mail from people who refer derisively to "government schools." Government schools? Oh yes, what we used to call public schools.

I can remember when people took pride in public schools. In fact, public education was considered a hallmark of democracy.

Of course, those were different days. We had not yet thought of bottled water, ornamental oranges or televised poker. And we respected teachers.

*********************************************

Comments