When Teachers Strike

With the start of the school year, usually students and parents utilizing the public school system, are again becoming concerned with classes, notebooks and pencils. But this school year brought a far greater concern: teacher strikes.   

In Washington State, we have recently watched as our Washington Education Association, (WEA) (or state branch of the National Education Association, the NEA, (or teacher's union..) encouraged school teachers to don red t-shirts and illegally go on strike.    In other-words...the teacher's union, is encouraging and organizing it's members to oppress parents and students and politicians in order to strong arm their own way... and get what they want.

Not only is it illegal, but this is a type of bullying.  Let's consider....

"Bully,"  as in to bully someone, is a verb. It means, to "use superior strength or influence to intimidate another person," ( typically to force him or her to do what you demand.)  The word, bully has synonyms, including words like to oppress, intimidate, strong-arm, and coerce   There have been mass anti-bullying ads on television renouncing "bullying"  as typically is done between school children, alarming the public as to this problem of bullying in the schools, but bullying is not just a problem with kids... no... no... adults do it too.

"Teachers in eight Washington school districts have decided to walk out of class for one day to protest what they say is too little funding for the state’s public schools.  Teachers want to see better health-care benefits for school staff, more money to pay for voter-approved class-size reductions and higher cost-of-living raises than the state House or Senate have proposed so far."  SeattleTimes,  Originally published April 17, 2015 

"Too little funding?"  (Don't people often vote to fund levies and bonds for our schools?)

"Better health care benefits for school staff." ( The teacher's union offers health care benefits too.)
"More money?"  The salary for Seattle teachers, as reported by one article about the recent Seattle teacher's strikes, a salary which includes some extra school hours and other pay, was $67,124 on average, but salary for teachers is usually not for an entire year as it does not include summer months and depends on the experience level of the teacher.   (Spokane Schools teacher's salaries can be viewed here. Hint: Look at salary by job title figures..)

"Class size reductions." (Is class size REALLY the issue?)

"Higher cost-of-living raises."....

Interesting note here might be that there is never any issue of curriculum content, better textbooks or free pencils and crayons for students.  No, when it comes to teacher strikes it is  always about the pay check and the hours.  

The teacher's union, the NEA, does not advocate bullying,  In fact, they have their own "anti-bullying" campaign.  So why then does the NEA use teacher power intentionally... to inflict pain on the education system in place by striking?  The answer is easy.... It works.  Then get what they want, because after all, they have the power to disrupt the flow of things and inflict pain in doing so.  

"Bullying is aggressive behavior that is intentional and that involves an imbalance of power. Most often, it is repeated over time."                          http://www.violencepreventionworks.org/public/bullying_tips_for_administrators.page

Make no mistake, teacher have power.  They control grades and seating in classrooms, they dominate parent teacher conferences.  Unions have power too... over teachers.... and therefore students and parents too.

"The last time teachers across the state held similar, one-day protests was in 1999, when thousands of teachers from about 50 school districts voted to walk out over a period of weeks, Wood said. That year, lawmakers granted a 3 percent raise for all public-school employees in the state."                                                            SeattleTimes,  Originally published April 17, 2015 

This year teachers in Seattle were on strike for a week.  Current headlines read,

" School will resume Thursday for Seattle's 53,000 students after teachers who have been on strike for a week reached a tentative agreement with Washington state's largest school district."SeattleTimes,  

Bullying works.

Teacher strikes are no small matter.  They negatively affect everyone in the community, and unions use this to their advantage as they tear down local control of schools by encouraging their members, local public school teachers, to strike, and to make it hurt parents, students and legislators s much as possible when they do.  

You can bet that legislators feel the pain when they work for votes after the public sees how the strikes are handled, or scramble for more funding to pay for the effect of a teachers strike and facilitate the legal ramification that ensue.  You can bet that parents feel oppressed as they are challenged to make adjustments for the absence of a child's overseer for the day if the parent is working outside of the home, or come up with activites and lesson plans to keep the kids busy while at home.  You can be confident too that they and their children all feel the threat of a loss of normalcy for the month of September, an effect that could quite possibly last the entire year.  Concerns about academia, sporting events and future in-school relationships with those who had been depended upon to teach that use the civic duty entrusted to them by the public for personal gain.  

Students not only feel the abandonment of not having a classroom to go to or a teacher to teach, but must also pay the penalty of extended days of school to make up for the lost required hours of learning mandated for schools and teachers to provide in a year.  

 In the city of Seattle this year, the strike cost $100,000 per day. Striking for five days cost the city $500,000. Tax dollars are supposed to be hard at work, instead they were on strike.  It makes you wonder what kind of learning could have taken place per buck, but teacher strikes are not done with students and their needs in mind.   They are about money, and control of the schools.  When all is said and done, the net result will be  the nationally organized unions, such as the WEA and ultimately the NEA, ( opposed to local/state governments and legislation,) will have more power over the management of our public schools.

Yes, striking teachers walk on out on  students, parents, and legislators, ignoring laws,  and contractual agreements.  you don't see the teachers marching for their own cause on the street in July or August, because they know all about bullying in the  union, and it works.  A strike will most effectively strong-arm the public into giving-in to their demands.

And what about teachers, parents or students, who cross picket lines?  Oh, it's dangerous to think differently than the crowd,  You have to consider what you plan to do and why you do it, because history shows us that often, these people are "bullied" too.

Learning in Freedom

Mark Twain, the famous author, once said,
"The man who does not read books has no advantage over the man that can not read them." 

Ignorance takes many forms.

Some people think going to school is what makes people smart.  Little do they know, school can get in the way of an education.  For this reason among others, many people over the years have returned to the concept of homeschool as a means of educating their children. However homeschooling is not always approved of and for a long time, not sending your children to school, or taking them out of school was illegal.  People pushed limits and laws to homeschool and pushed legislators to make home school legal and make homeschool laws.  People worked hard to make it possible for parents to choose private schools as well.

Fact was, parents had a right to make decisions about education  for their kids.  Fact was, parents did educate their own children at  home with great results.  Due to public demand, and facts that proved their points, statesmen began to work voting on legislation to ensure a parents freedom to homeschool.

The idea caught on like a roaring river.   Everyone was "homeschooling."  It became the IN thing to do.  Even public schools began marketing themselves to whose who had this ideology of homeschooling.   Washington State law guaranteed homeschooling as a separate entity from both public and private school.  Parents directed the learning of their own children applied their own philosophy of education too.  Homeschooled students had access to military and colleges.  They made use of programs allowing 16 yr olds to enter colleges and get dual diplomas and AA degrees by the age of eighteen and were able to take the GED too.  (Not that it is necessary to do GED, you can award a diploma.)

Recently, I read an article which declared,"homeschooling, as an ideology, has simply run it's course."  Not only that, but the author made it a point to tell school officials that parents with their desire to teach their own from  home were nothing for the public schools to worry about.  Did you know public school teachers and principals lay awake at night worrying about homeschool?  Apparently they can sleep a little easier now because the river of homeschooling ideology that was once running free has been dammed.

Maybe what concerned them was that with the WA Home School Laws, Laws governing Home Based Education, the local public school essentially lost the right to criminalize those who didn't send their kids to them for education.  The article stated that school officials needn't worry...  the homeschooling movement is, he declared, done.  It's finished.  It is no more.  The  main reason for this, he said, was that there homeschooling was no longer just for those free thinking, 1960's, love-child, Jesus-freak and "hippy"-type, sometimes religious... wacko's and antidisestablishmentarianists  that it started from.  Homeschooling had gone, what he called "mainstream."  No longer did homeschoolers flow against the current of public school, in his opinion,  they were joining forces.

It's true.  People "partner" with the schools and mistakenly, (usually due to the schools misinformation to students and parent,)  think they are 'homeschooling" or participating in the "homeschool program" at the school.  It's professionally marketed to them that way too.  This too is part of the "homogenization." The purity of the concept of a home education has been clouded, even removed from their mind.  They like the money offered, they feel more confident partnering with schools.  Their friends are doing it.  Maybe there are too many unknowns, or so  it seems... when like a pioneer of yesteryear or some famous knowledge explorer you are embarking into the unfamiliar territory of home based instruction for your own child.  Parent partnerships feel like home, so people join them without even thinking too hard about it.

“Far from failing in its intended task, our educational system is in fact succeeding magnificently because its aim is to keep the American people thoughtless enough to go on supporting the system.” ― Richard Mitchell
It takes a certain conviction about something for a parent to choose to homeschool.   What convinced me, may not be the same thing that convinced or convinces you, but were both convinced that homeschooling is the way to do for our families, and so we file a Declaration of Intent form  (DOI) This declaration form that is filed goes completely by the wayside when the student is enrolled, full time, in public school.  It means no more, but in many cases it was the filing of this form that made the student eligible for the alternative learning program at the school.

This making people file DOI forms with an intent to homes for the purpose of actually putting them into the program at the local public school, asking them to wait for a period of time before actually enrolling in a PPP is a deception.  It misleads the parent into thinking that the school is offering a homeschooling program.  This is only covering up the parent partnership for what it really is... alternative school... and in the mind of school officiates, alternatives school is school for public school "drop outs." Additionally, high enrollment rates in these "homeschool programs" if they are called that, serves to tell the NEA that they were right... and the parents who want to homeschool...they were wrong, because, you see, all these parents in the programs agree.  They need the help from experts at the school.

This is a travesty people.

Public school parent partnerships are NOT homeschooling.  They tell you they are not home based education, but home based education IS HOME SCHOOL in WA.  These partnerships are extensions of the public school now operating within a private home.  If it's your home, then it's probably your kitchen table.  You now answer to them for what your teach in your own home.  The two, home school and public school are completely different beasts.

It's weird.  "Homeschooling," is like some strange designer insignia on clothing, something viewed with prestige. Everybody wants to wear the ideology of teaching their own children on their sleeve. "I am a homeschooler," they all shout.   Have you ever seen two parents, one who homeschooling and one in a parent partnership, debating the issue of what homeschooling is and who a homeschooler is and isn't.  It can become a heated topic of discussion.

It reminds me of the two woman arguing before King Solomon who both wanted to be the mother of the living child.  (1 Kings 3:16-28)  Solomon knew a way to determine the true mother of the child.  He knew one would desire to ensure that her beloved child would live.  Solomon was right.  One mother didn't really care if the child lived or if he died, the other desired nothing but for it to live.  Likewise, as people argue about who is a honeschooler and who is not, or even what constitutes "home school" there is a way to tell:  See who supports and cares about protecting and defending the current homeschool law.  The one who does, is.  The one who doesn't isn't.  (Like the woman in the story, they's be happy to see it torn into two and disappear.)

Homeschooling parents do not write to legislators asking for funding for homeschool programs at the school.  It is illegal for schools to fund home based school.  Homeschoolers do not work side by side in some kind of partnership with the public school and they do not have their curriculum paid for by the tax payers of their state.  They do not school their children in every subject under the direct supervision of teachers at the local school.  They even have no requirement to meet or attend classes on any school campuses ever! Homeschoolers are learning in freedom.

Homeschoolers are exempt from the WASL and Core Curriculum testing too.  Their school is done at home with their teacher, the parent, who is also director, not merely a learning mentor or educational coach. Homeschoolers can use religious materials for credits given towards a diploma, send their kids on to colleges, and their homeschooled students may join the military too.

You might say homeschooling is just one little real-time exercise among many in what "freedom" looks like and truly is.

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