COMMON CORE IS BODY CAMERA FOR TEACHERS

It is a difficult task to look at social ills and figure out what is happening and why. The interacting array forces can be confusing because they are. For example, I see Scott Walker, the union busting Governor of Wisconsin s a viable candidate to become president of the United States. What is incredible is when we consider we are a country of 330 million people of which by far most are working people; people who should be union members. The United States is a capitalistic society meaning we have to great economic forces held in balance by one another; those forces are labor and management. Working conditions, wages, work palace safety, the environment, etc. are all on the table. All of these things benefit workers, some benefit both management, and labor but all of them cost management money hence cut profits. When I look around, I find that the upper 1% of the population is holding the nation's wealth while poverty is expanding. Both of these extremes are cutting into the middle class. I look at the number of politicians who endorse the Ayn Rand political philosophy. Of course, that number consists of those who openly endorse her while most seem ashamed to let their affiliation, apparently because it would make their greed public. They often hide under a misleading name or political party label. Names such as Willie Nelson, Eric Canter, Paul Ryan, and Allen Greenspan speak to the diverse nature of the people involved. The Koch brothers give huge sums of money to universities in exchange for that university teaching her philosophy. If you are healthy, have an average or above average IQ, and are employed then the benefits of society are for you, but if you are crippled, even if wounded in a war, ill, or below average IQ, or elderly without a pension, you simply do not count—human garbage. This type of thinking is what drives Republican Party politics. There is no such thing as compassionate conservatism, which is tantamount to saying there is no such thing as compassionate management. In other words, profits come before people. In contrast, for workers the opposite it true; people come before profits. Unions grew out of one workers concern for their fellow workers. Both traits seem to have originated with humankind. All my life I have been content to be a worker. When it comes to workers uniting to form unions, I cannot even imagine a world without that happening, but, on the other hand, I cannot imagine a world without management. Recently, the government unintentionally ignited a firestorm over a thing called Common Core, which is a list of suggested level of learning students across the nation to achieve a way to measure the achievement of these goals, which is where politician Scott Walker entered into the discussion of education. The first step in understanding why the Wisconsin Governor’s sudden interest in Common Core is to realize he is an Ayn Rand disciple funded by the billionaire Koch brothers, which means he hates unions, and he hates public schools or any other government program. To elect him president would be equivalent to having David and Charles Koch setting in the White House on the lap of Ayn Rand. It is easy to find teachers, some of them the best of teachers we have, fighting against Common Core. They feel the associated testing is unnecessary and is unduly stressing their students. Teachers, like police and firefighters, are members of what we refer to as public service unions. Leaders of these unions are part of a collective bargaining system in which they negotiate wages and working conditions with government officials. Of course, we are the government and the money for their wages, etc. comes from the taxpayers or us. The next step is to realize public schools are often not doing their jobs. Comparative testing with countries from around the world shows we are rather low in ranking. His hurts our pride but especially our good teacher’s pride. However, government officials recognize this tendency for low ranking is not just international but is regional in the United States, which of course we can easily tie to the creation of Common Core. The scapegoat for much of this is teachers’ unions, and rightfully so. We all recognize teachers unions often protect poor teachers. The aha moment for Walker is when he realized he could use parents and family unrest with public school unions protecting bad teachers to destroy these public service unions, thus render them ineffective and cut teachers wages to the bone. The way to do this is to cut funding for public schools and to force privatization. What a perfect “conservative” road to a tax saving by busting unions has become!!! The irony is that people such as me seem to be unable to correct the situation. How do I fight for Common Core at the same time, work to support of unions whose members are working to destroy the Common Core program. I would be working alongside parents and teachers as well as working with other people who are voting for union busting government officials such as Scott Walker. Can we reduce the debate to something as simple as work to support Arne Duncan and Common Core to improve schools and education in general while working against Scott Walker’s efforts to destroy unions? A big part of fixing the situation is to fix unions. A big part of fixing public school education is to destroy the influence bad teachers are having on unions. That effort should focus on testing students, as Common Core provides for to determine if their teachers are doing a good job, which is exactly what both good and bad teachers do not want. Just as it is with the police, teachers do not want body cameras or someone looking over their shoulders while they are doing their jobs. However, we all know there are bad teachers out there. How do we find them? In my opinion, the best way to sort out the good from the bad is to test students. Again, we can ask teachers if they are good or bad and they are more than willing to tell you but that is like reading an autobiography to learn the truth. As for Scott Walker, we will always have bad politicians; however, to solve that problem we have the voting box. It is just unfortunate that Walker and the Koch brothers have found this huge loophole through which to drive their brand of bad government. URL: firetreepub.blogspot.com Comments Invited and not moderated