The Teachers’ Unions Are Evil

I won’t say that those who run America’s teachers’ unions hate children. I will only say that they act as though they hate children. The teachers’ unions are the number one obstacle to education reform, by far. They stand in the way of school choice, school safety, and virtually any attempt to improve teacher quality or reform schools in any way. They feed off of, and promote, incompetence and lack of accountability. No one harms America’s youth as much as the teachers’ unions, not even drug dealers.

The latest case in point is the unions’ insistence that our schools remain closed down, even though 1) scientific opinion is unanimous that schools pose little Covid risk, 2) schools in Europe are open, and the CDC says that our schools should re-open as well, and 3) our students and their parents are suffering horribly as a result of this year’s ongoing school closures. Many students, especially low-income minorities, have lost a year of education and likely will never catch up. If it is up to the teachers’ unions, schools will not reopen any time soon, and the damage to an entire generation will be incalculable.

That is the context in which the Chicago Teachers Union tweeted this astonishingly stupid claim:

Many local teachers’ unions are run by left-wing extremists, which largely explains why our children are being indoctrinated in leftism. But this particular claim is stupid almost beyond belief. The data unequivocally show that minority students, specifically blacks, have suffered the most from the unions’ shutdowns. In fact, a large percentage of low-income minority students have abandoned education altogether as a result of those shutdowns, and of those who, at least, are participating, a great many are doing poorly. Thus, for instance, 40% of all grades in the St. Paul, Minnesota public schools are Fs. And those are the kids who showed up to take the tests. “Distance learning” is a bad joke.

So how on earth is it “racist” to want to allow minority kids back in the classroom? There was a time when avowed racists, prominent Democratic Party politicians, barred black kids from entering schools. Now that role is being played by the teachers’ unions.

The union’s “sexism” claim is mystifying. Girls generally do better in school than boys, and undoubtedly more girls than boys would welcome a return to the classroom. The union’s references to “sexism” and “misogyny” appear to be unconscious reflexes like that of Dr. Strangelove, whose arm can’t resist periodically giving a Nazi salute.

This teacher’s union tweet was so obviously dumb that the union had to delete it. But make no mistake: America’s teachers’ unions are a force for evil. They are incredibly left-wing, and they willingly sacrifice the interests of students to those of fat cat union bosses and Democratic Party politicians at every opportunity, as the current shutdowns exemplify.

Public sector unions only recently became legal, and in my opinion, that was a mistake. But of all the government unions, the teachers’ unions are by far the most destructive.

Notice: All comments are subject to moderation. Our comments are intended to be a forum for civil discourse bearing on the subject under discussion. Commenters who stray beyond the bounds of civility or employ what we deem gratuitous vulgarity in a comment — including, but not limited to, “s***,” “f***,” “a*******,” or one of their many variants — will be banned without further notice in the sole discretion of the site moderator.

Responses