{"id":197,"date":"2007-05-08T18:19:17","date_gmt":"2007-05-09T00:19:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=197"},"modified":"2007-05-08T18:23:11","modified_gmt":"2007-05-09T00:23:11","slug":"shaddap","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=197","title":{"rendered":"Shaddap!"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Yeah, teachers at public schools want parents <a href=\"http:\/\/www.washingtonpost.com\/wp-dyn\/content\/article\/2007\/05\/06\/AR2007050601080.html\">to be involved<\/a>.<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>Yet some parents in Montgomery County and elsewhere have discovered limits on the get-involved policy when they ask questions about individual teachers, whether those queries are about alleged abuse of students or a decision to fire a popular instructor.<\/p>\n<p>School officials said they are required to hold back information because of privacy laws, union contracts and potential lawsuits. Some acknowledged that a more open policy would help families handle the repercussions of incidents involving teachers. But the officials said there is little they can do.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>The key phrase in that paragraph is &#8220;union contracts&#8221;.  Five to one this fired teacher had failed to genuflect to the Union in some way.  Was probably making the other teachers look bad.  I&#8217;m reminded of <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Jaime_Escalante\">Jaime Escalente<\/a>, a situation in which the teachers&#8217; union decided that keeping latino kids pig-ignorant was worth getting rid of a trouble-maker.<\/p>\n<p>Of course, the parents&#8217; and students&#8217; opinions don&#8217;t matter.  <em>They never will so long as the system is a government monopoly<\/em>.  It&#8217;s about the special interests &#8212; bureaucrats and unions.  That&#8217;s all that matters.<\/p>\n<p>The more time goes on, the more I find myself agreeing with Neal Boortz&#8217;s extremism.  Big Education &#8212; that ugly intersection of teachers&#8217; unions and politicians &#8212; may be a greater threat to our future than Al-Quaeda.<\/p>\n<p>Yeah, I said it.  I have far more fear of my kids growing up ignorant and out of work than their being killed by a terrorist.<\/p>\n<p>The worst thing is that we&#8217;ve got millions of dedicated teachers out there trapped in this broken Soviet-style system.  Is anyone going to speak for them?  Does anyone care?  Teachers love their unions. And they fail to realize that these unions are destroying their chance to make a difference.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Yeah, teachers at public schools want parents to be involved. Yet some parents in Montgomery County and elsewhere have discovered limits on the get-involved policy when they ask questions about individual teachers, whether those queries are about alleged abuse of students or a decision to fire a popular instructor. School officials said they are required &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/?p=197\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Shaddap!<\/span> <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[5,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-197","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-politics","category-science"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/s2BzKF-shaddap","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=197"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/197\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=197"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=197"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/michaelsiegel.net\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=197"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}