With a wife, sister, sister-in-law, cousin, and many friends working in teaching and/or the CPS, I’m fairly familiar with what their day-to-day lives and jobs are like. Consequently, it’s amazing to read or hear the avalanche of not only negative but also grossly uninformed reactions to the strike. I’d compare it to going outside one morning and discovering a polka-dotted sun rising in the north.
Truly, I can say without qualms that the anti-union folks are either Emanuel flacks, professional liars, or embarrassingly misinformed citizens. Frankly, it is ASTONISHING how few journalists (not to mention their newspapers) have bothered to perform the most rudimentary research about actual teacher’s pay, classroom sizes and conditions, lesson plans, and the rest. Whenever they’re confronted by the teachers, they mostly waffle or say they don’t want to argue, they’re just thinking about the KIDS, MAN. Nah, what I suspect they’re doing is regurgitating press releases and summaries of think tank white papers.
Sadly, the teachers are facing a hugely powerful and despicable opponent. They’re not just facing off with Rahm. They’re dealing with the Powers That Wish to Continue to Be—people who would lie and cheat to screw a child out of a nickel.
Which is pretty much what they’re doing.
