Now, We Love Teachers?
If Sandy Hook, Connecticut teaches us anything, it’s not about the bogus political debate about gun control.
It’s about teachers; perhaps the most maligned profession in modern day America.
When the Wisconsin state workers struggle was raging, teachers were critiqued, lambasted and portrayed as spoiled, overpaid idiots who needed discipline by, of all people—politicians!
They only worked a few months a year, they said. They only worked a few hours a day, they said. They are lazy, they said.
Of course, there was a method to their madness.
They attacked teachers only to really attack teachers unions; and they did so to promote the schools privatization scheme.
They did it to promote their corporate agenda.
Now, a new tone arises in response to the Sandy Hook Massacre.
Now, some of the same voices that damned teachers a few months ago are praising them, praising them through crocodile tears.
Teachers don’t need to die to become heroes.
Their jobs are notoriously underpaid, and frequently under-resourced.
They are targeted daily, not by madmen with guns, but by lobbyists for the privatization industry, and the politicians whom they hire.
Their work, which begins with the love of children, is challenging enough, and oftentimes heart-breaking.
It’s not supposed to make companies rich.
It’s supposed to make kids learn.
—PrisonRadio.org, December 21, 2012