The Biggest Bully in School: Why Public Education Is Failing in America | Short Documentaries 

the Union and Teachers want the DRAMA ... they want the damage. Disgusting. Don't support either.

I have a friend who was attacked by a student wheeling a 3’ 2x4 in a shop class. The teacher was fired for defending himself with his hands. This was probably 30 years ago in a progressive city in Texas. I can’t imagine how much worse the imbalance has gotten.

The dude with the board committed felonious assault.

@@matthewrogowski8526 perhaps but he didn’t even get in school suspension.

Correct. They care about teaming people up to destroy legitimate industry, and convert society into a counter-reason collective.

I taught in MD. I did not join the union, but dues are taken from teachers' paychecks no matter their membership status. This was before Janus, so I could not do anything about it. There was a benefit, though. The medical insurance was great. I had life-saving brain surgery, with all the pre- and post-care, paid for by insurance. My co-pays were miniscule. I left the state 2 weeks after the surgery and i won't be back.

I am retired. My Maryland middle school was very conservative and relatively unwelcoming to those who weren’t. The most anti union teacher almost lost his job but the Union saved it. Personally, I thought he was in the right, but the parent was vocal and lawsuit happy so the BOE of going to fire him. I felt he deserved a commendation. After his experience, he never spoke another bad word about the union. The health insurance was good but like all employers that depends on the county. The retirement is horrible. The best benefit was an almost free Masters Degree ($40,000-$60,000 value). Pay in Maryland was highly variable based on the county you work in. There could be a $20,000 starting pay difference. I wouldn’t trust school administrators to give out pay raises based on meritocracy. Maryland Teachers Union has components to it. The political part you can opt out of and not pay that portion of the union dues. I always mention it to anyone complaining about the political arm of the union. It is a simple way to protest when you disagree with the union politics. I am sorry your wife felt bullied. I hope her health improves. Best wishes to you and yours!

My post-secondary institution just voted on bringing in the MEA. We had not been represented by any union, prior. The pressure to join was immense. When the cards came to allow a vote, I signed mine. But when the vote came, I abstained. It was my thought that anyone desiring to join should have that right to vote on it, but I would not. As abstaining doesn't count as a negative vote, that's as far as it went, on my part. I was delighted and surprised to see a substantial number of votes directly against the union. However, the union WAS approved. Now I will be pressured to directly join and pay dues. But this is the decision I made. I'm sticking to it-- for all of the reasons this video presents. I'm of the belief that we need to live our beliefs.... so I would not have felt right denying them a vote. But I won't join this organization... I don't support it.

@@renadamTWELVE as you know we live in a litigious society. I priced the difference between educators insurance offered by my home insurance company and union dues. Union dues won. There were other benefits I used. 2+ free hours with a lawyer per year. So they could do your will one year, year 2 file your consensual divorce, year 3 the closing for your new house. There were other benefits but I’m retired and no longer a union member. You can lower your dues by opting out of the political process of the union.

@@damoab1909 cuckoo for cocoa puff, go wander your desert.

My kids go to Catholic school but homeschool is plan B. I would love this as well. Kids need more stay at home mom’s. A lot of the moms in our kids school are SAHM and of course most of the kids are in a 2 parent household. I think that is the biggest privilege a child can have.

Not the biggest, but a close second in a list of several hundred reasons to educate at home or with a group of like minded friends.

So how would homeschool work? Like you guys say homeschool but never talk what would you do?

@@Hgh38 Your best source for info is your local homeschool group. The homeschooling rules are different for each state/area & they would be most familiar for the laws in your area. That being said, homeschooling is easier than most people think. Homeschool hours do not have to be the same as school hours. Once my kids got into the routine; they were finished by 12pm (so 5 hours of school). There are also co-op classes where a room is rented & a parent teaches. There are outdoor days & playground days. There's a lot of options out there.

Exactly

R. M. I taught home schooling classes for my local Home Schooling Coop for eleven years while at the same time having a full time job! I can say without a single doubt that the students coming in to my classes from Public (government) School were many times hopelessly behind Home Schooling students. I say this without hesitation, "Public School IS child abuse."

Though I believe your experience and insight, that is a sad state of affairs.

I'm glad you're gone, the students are better now that you're no longer near them.

@@Bc232klm Honest question. How many children do you have?

@Richard Fox Yes, they are about kids when they feel it is in their best interest re public relations.

Was that New York or LA?

@@barbaras676 Al Shanker, president of the United Federation of Teachers. He was a national leader, like Randi Weingarten, but earlier.

@@Nordic_Sky Randi Weingarten is an unmitigated piece of useless crap. She shut down schools and lied and said she wanted schools open. Maybe she knows that the southern border is secure, too.

@@vinyltapelover I detest her. Ugh.

my teachers just didn't teach in the 80's.........

@@dnice4335 :-( I guess that's one down side of growing up in the boonies. Small towns hadn't been quite as infected, yet.

@@AMKB01 as kids we loved it- we looked forward to at least 3 classes a day where the teachers socialised with us. ZERO work. Not an open book, not a word about subject were attending for that 45 minutes.

@@dnice4335 that's just... amazing. Kinda scary, too. When we were homeschooling still, and I would get challenged about how I, a mere parent, could think I could do a better job of educating our kids than a trained teacher in school, I would sometimes answer that it would take effort on the part of the parents to do a worse job than the public school system. I hadn't realized just how true that statement really was!

@@AMKB01 What the teacher has over you .... Maybe ..... is knowledge. That is not always true. I've seen teachers who knew nothing about the subject. I had a reading teacher who had you read to her. After she "tested" everyone you were assigned where to start in ... Sorry I'm not sure what to call it, but you basily read off a card, answered the questions on the back and if you did good moved on to the next. You gave the teacher your paper. Halfway through the year we had to read for her again and she placed me where she felt I needed to be. At the time I was terrible reading out loud. (Speech problems, self-confidence and other issues) I had to re read all those articles and tales again. Later in college I was tested for a learning disability. For reading and reading comprehension I was over 90% of the population. She had me doing things for less than 50% of the population. My point if that is all the teacher is going to do you can do it at home with the child, in a more relaxed environment.

luckily we have the internet now so kids can't be brainwashed by homeschooling parents as easily.

The people against charter schools are the ones that want better education.

@@Bc232klm you have been drinking too much cool-aid.

Right, because everyone knows the option is so simple. How stupid of parents to not do that. It’s not like they have other responsibilities like a job or two, or even more kids to raise. Just leave your kid at home or pay the equivalent of a vehicle every year in subpar education. Geez I wonder why people don’t just do that since everybody has thousands of dollars laying around.

@@Bc232klm Oh, yes. The internet is a completely safe place for kids. 🙄

Teachers no longer have to pay dues. Look up the Supreme Court Janus ruling.

Teachers no longer have to pay dues. Look up the Supreme Court Janus ruling.

I remember my dad wanted to put me in a private high school. Unfortunately, my grandmother put me in a regular high school, where I was bullied because I would receive speech, and the students would laugh at me and the teacher wouldn’t do anything about at.

I always had anxiety from not fitting in and not having the right clothes, as well as unhappiness at home. This was a huge distraction from learning. It really hit home recently when I saw a teenager on RU-vid say she knew she looked good, and could focus on her work. Fitting in gives you peace of mind.

Private schools are not exempt from bullying. How naive. 🙄

Private schools have plenty of bullying....more so than public school, in my opinion. (K-10 private and 11-12 public) I homeschool and my daughter was just called weird today by her so called friend. Bullying happens everywhere and we can't completely shield our children from it even though I wish we could. The best thing that we can do is try to be there for them when it happens and give them the tools they need to deal with it.

I taught at a private school. Same old stuff...bullying, nastiness, student laziness, etc. However, not as violent.

angel goya I am a 74 year Californian resident , living in Newsom's one party, controlled, state prison. I live roughly 90 minutes north of SD. I thought LAUSD and the teachers' union were crap until more stories about the SD school district surfaced. I always wondered how much in government dollars the SD school district received for having classes for bussed in illegals while your schools were still shut down? I hope you ate doing better and you are in a safer environment.

On the one hand there is literally no discipline. But on the other hand teaching attracts mediocrities who figure anyone can be smarter than a bunch of kids so that is perceived as their only venue to be some level of management. But the jokes on them because teachers are not management, hence their reliance on labor unions to protect themselves. And since American public schools are really only daycare centers for mostly imbeciles, teacher quality doesn’t matter because most of the kids are certainly not going to learn much of anything anyway. So everybody loses. Hence the rising popularity of home schooling, UNSCHOOLING and online academy not to mention just screwing off until you’re old enough to attend GED cram school, my former speciality. I could take anyone with a sixth grade reading level and get them their high school equivalency diploma in six months no sweat! That’s literally how easy the GED test actually is. Then at that point you’re golden for community college. After two years of community college it’s a cinch to get into the local commuting state university such as Cleveland State or the University of Akron. That’s literally how little public school even matters. I always vote no on school levies except for Cuyahoga Community College and the public library. I taught for 7 years and it was a complete waste of time except for the GED tutoring I did for two years at the end. I had the highest pass rate in the state for two years.

Wow omg. There is this school located in New York called Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation. And the kid was constantly getting bullied by two other kids, and he would tell the teacher and the principal about the situation, and nothing was done. Therefore, the boy brought a knife to school because he was bullied in school based on his sexuality. I guess it was revenge. So he stab the other kid constantly, where everyone was screaming, and panicking that parents had to pick up their kids early from school. Urban Assembly School for Wildlife Conservation is permanently closed for good.

@@keciaaskew5166 ".. The kid was constantly getting bullied by two other kids, and he would tell the teacher and the principal about the situation, and nothing was done." I have a great disdain for the slogan used by teachers and teachers' unions, "We care about the kids". IThe slogan seems conveniently used when teachers and Teachers' unions are asking for more money, more benefits, more time off,smaller classes and unnecessary b.s.,. especially in the larger school districts in the nations, like in California and New York. You have all these highly, educated adults with degrees and they are unable to properly "care about the kids" when it comes to such things as bullying. I don't know how good the school was, but it is closed down and kids have to go elsewhere.

As of typing this I'm almost through my first year of college and I'm already dealing with headaches after some classes... good to know that I'm not the only one who thinks the system is broken

@Richard Fox During the years of Rush Limbaugh broadcasting, not only did he speak of how these things were occurring at colleges including the prestigious ones. Rush over 30 years, would have students call in, like Sampson Liang, speaking of the problems in asking questions, voicing an opinion which might be in opposition to prevailing thinking. Students, now, even in high schools, are being harassed by other students if they are known to support Conservatism. One female high school student, questioned crt and white privilege being taught at her school. She, a Conservative, had previously spoken with her parents of her concerns. They listened, approved and supported what she felt she would do. So, she was not only harassed and villifief by other students, she was a straight "A" student, who wad suspended from school until she would change her position. She was able to have class work and assignments sent home so she could keep up. Over time, education, including k-12, had turned in to propaganda mills. My thinking that it had come about because of the bombing, burning, protesting rioting radicals of the 60s and 70s getting into Education, big business and politics. It has taken awhile but thid id what we've got. This, sir, is how and why they "Do Dare". Sorry for the long response to, "how dare they", a phrase also famously used by the Green activist blond girl.

I am from Mississippi and we aren't seeing it to this extent yet. My neice is a teacher in Utah and I am appalled at the things she tells me about what goes on in her school. Just this week she had a student say he was going to shot some of the kids and her (6th grade) and the ONLY thing that happened to the child is he was suspended for the rest of the day. I told her she should quit. That is just insane. Also they cannot fail anyone.

@Richard Fox "Unions need to be stronger - however poor performance must be addressed." Unions needing to be stronger? There may have been a place for unions, but not any more. As a former chief steward in a union, I can say, the tail has increasingly been wagging the dog more. If you are talking about "poor performance" of the students, how's that going to happen as the? Curriculum and books are set up by the district, the unions , "educators" and folks up the educational food change. You have districts, such as in New York City, who are purposely taking out A.P. classes so as not to cause equity issues for other students. There are schools and school districts who are adjusting the pace of leaning, down, to accommodate slow learners and the newer illegal immigrant , low educated students. Again some of this is occurring in NYC. What about underperforming teachers who get paid the same as excellent performing teachers,, because of union contracts, There is something to be said of Merit Paid. It is curious with the all the wealth of knowledge in education, the scientists, mathematicians, economists no one, to date has set a viable proposal of how to institute Merit Pay? Maybe NO ONE wants to do it, because it would be like making sense.

@Richard Fox Thank you for the clarification. I truly like and appreciate how you expressed your thoughts on the subject and I have great respect for your input. I'm a great grandfather, having retired from the military and also retired from a government job. As a youngster, I worked selling papers and having a paper route. Worked while in high school and after graduation. Served in the military, sold insurance, sold copiers(draw against commission ). I worked in a factory, where I became a chief steward. As a manager, in the military and private sector, among various duties in both environments, , I evaluated employee performance and production which could lead to eventual promotions and pay increases. Maybe the culmination of all those working experiences may have a contributed to my , uh, tougher, 'old school', “a day’s work, for a day’s pay” mentality….good, bad and otherwise.. It is my thought, whether the working environment is union shop or not, Merit Pay or not, an employer will always find a way to abuse an employee, if they have a mind to do so. I have seen and even experienced it myself. I think some of the comments submitted will attest to that. So although we may ‘agree to disagree about Merit Pay, it is my thinking, something could be figured out with the two of us included in the discussions,…. if we were asked of course, lol lol. I see tenure, particularly for K-12 teachers, as a type of “safety net” that that works to the advantage of the average, poorer performing teachers. You can’t get rid of, or replace, a poor performing tenured, teacher with a motivated one. The students ultimately lose.

@Richard Fox Hah, my dad's family from Texas👍🏼.I was just getting ready to shut down and saw your reply. I'm in Califi-funkia with one of the most worthless person in life much less politics...Newsom, nephew in law of Gangsta Nasty Pelosi. Your description of teaching and pay[reward] seem to be a good system and a good alternative to what is going, here, across the pond from you folks:). With being a successor to another steward, humbly, I was. pretty good. He left to go back to Boston, Ma. Before passing the reins over to me, he briefed me on the quirks and deviousness of the management of the company and briefed me on the those who would cry wolf to get you into a no win, faux grievance situation with management. The last thing, Tommie(was his name)did was to give his shirt pocket sized notebook with stuff I needed to be aware of and past grievances that employees had files or attempted to file.

When I was asked to resign [for beating up an assailant] I was overjoyed that I finally had an airtight excuse to quit. I had a very cheerful talk with the principal about my function aboard the nuclear submarine I’d crewed on as a quartermaster, listened to his stories about being an MP in the China/Burma/India theater during the Second World War, left the building with an immense sense of relief, then spent the summer as a gardener at this really peculiar Episcopalian monaster after attending truck driving school, then switched to adult education at Job Corps. Teaching is such a shitty job I simply can’t imagine being upset by either getting fired or quitting. Driving a garbage truck would be a more satisfying career since at least you’d be performing an actual public service.

To notice it that soon mad respect, I knew something was up but still did my best because education was important in my family. I did graduate college with honors and said it’s a piece of paper. Only reason I still have it is my mom got it framed 😂.

Totally agree. Public high school in particular is mostly social life and sports. Just the frequent class changes ruin the learning atmosphere. And it’s all mass lecturing to the dull normal level. Real education such as that dispensed in the great British universities revolves around the tutorial method and heavy concentrated reading in a specific subject, the very antithesis of American mass schooling. Even at the university level in the USA you are continually being distracted from your major course of study by the requirements that you be continually wandering around the campus taking all of these silly distribution requirements. So typically you only get one year’s worth of credits even in your actual major. Plus it takes at least a year too long. Garbage in garbage out.

@@marcmeinzer8859 true to some degree until graduate level, then it is intensity training solely focused on your major with supporting electives. Ideally. Most students opt for the easiest route. I never took an elective that was easy. Many do.

@@renadamTWELVE Yes, for instance you don’t often hear of people taking foreign languages or calculus as their electives. Were I raising kids I would force them to take four years of a language and four years of math in high school in order to make college easier for them. But I found even science electives at the 300 level to be quite easy typically. I also found the concentrated first year of Spanish done in one quarter quite easy as well. Bull I could never follow what university math instructors were doing even though I easily learned celestial navigation in advanced underwater navigation for submarine quartermasters when I was in the navy. The navy no longer has submarine quartermasters today having automated that job out of existence, just as the coast guard did.

Where I live, school choice is part of state law.

Religious schools need not apply.

Prívate speech therapy through medical insurance or self-pay.

No you're not, youre not rich enough lol. How wealthy do you think you are????

@@Bc232klm everyone who owns or rents their residence pays for government schools through property taxes. Are you so ignorant that you don’t know where the funding originates? Or are you one of those who live in a tent on public land?

Tenure started as a university thing. It was meant to protect professors who had opposing political views that the higher ups, who would fire political opponents. In NJ, it takes 7 years and observation to get it (pretty simple). After that you're pretty protected. I don't know if it's changed in 4 years but in NJ (I moved out of state) you CANNOT get out of the union, even if you refuse union status, they will still take the money out of your check for dues.

Look up: Association of American Educators. Non-political, still has liability insurance and other types of support built in. Saved me $1000 a year compared to District/NEA Union.

@Ian we just had a vote on MEA at my institution. I voted for their card to vote, but abstained on the vote itself. My thought is they have a right to vote on a union (hence the card), but beyond that they are on their own. I cannot support it, either. And I won't.

It’s easy to be a good teacher if you have one kid to take care of and manage. Imagine having 40+ in a classroom times 5 of those every school year. It’s not that easy being a good teacher. And all kids have individual needs. 200+ kids, it’s not even possible to help all these kids. But that’s what DOE expects.

Your whole angle is misguided. Homeschool is literally just being a parent. That’s what all parents should be doing regardless of public school or homeschool. The reason the schools fail is not because of the teachers. It’s the behavioral issues, large classrooms, lack of support from administrators and parents

The economic prospects are grim with the schools

Teachers are already taking care of that. They're leaving the profession in droves and there aren't enough young folks willing to go into education and take their place. (It isn't because of the unions.)

Twitter is trash since Musk took it over, don't tell me you're a Musk boot licker? The guy is an idiot who takes credit for things others do.

Private religious schools should never receive a penny of tax dollars.

They pay 'fair share,' not the full dues amount, as they stand to benefit from union negotiations at contract time.

Leif Hendricksen Wasn't there a lawsuit by teachers regarding Forced dues and the issue of those dues going to campaigns and causes not agreed to by the union members? It seemed to drop off from media attention.

@@ga6589 Respectfully, sir, the use of "Fair share" , is well worn phrase, a playbook talking point, that to me, is not entirely correct. If there was a way to have total access to "the books "and create a pie chart of the spending and out go where ALL the membership dues are going, I'd take a s.w.a.g. that maybe 10%, if that much, is going to negotiating salaries, benefits and pensions. Unions are a great money making con game. Their end isn't fully taking care of their members, they are into acquiring power, control and influencing public policy. Sorry, but you're trying to sell Igloos in the Sahara residents. What your selling, I'm not buying it.

Cool, parents can pay 100% of their children's education and everyone else's taxes go down.

@@troywest7045 public schools are a bad investment. if parents had to pay for education they'd have a different set of standards. more like what we see in private schools today.

I would like to see Catholicism to be eradicated from this great nation. It's time to get rid of the corrupt Vatican with all their scandals. I am baffled by the fact that people dare to call themselves Catholics after all that has happened.

You pay property taxes, regardless if you have a child or not, regardless if they go to public or private schools. Needless to say religious schools will never receive a penny of tax dollars.

mae2759 When I checked, a few years back, LAUSD full time teachers were getting paid about $62,000 a year. Their $15000/year health insurance was paid by the school district. When they were asked to return to work, the Union presented conditions that included SJW issues, which had nothing to do with education. One condition that was asked for and granted, was being given a "ridiculous benefit' of a $500/month stipend for child care to apply towards their children. Schools are teaching children that math and language are oppressive and racist. Why are teachers' unions needed?

No. Most men believe that boys who get molested by crazy female teachers are “lucky”.

Jocof 01 Good write up. When you wrote, " Those groups can be manipulated to benefit some teachers while making it more difficult for other teachers.." it had thinking of how political parties like to draw and redistrict lines to serve their advantage in getting votes. Speak of manipulating...when my youngest was going to school, in the late 80s, the school attempted a unilateral move, to move her schoolmate, Angie, from A.P. classes to regular classes to accommodate another family's child, who was a known "darling" of the school district. I think they thought they could pull it off as the Angie's mother was a single mom with two children in school. She took a half day off , working as an R.N. to go to the school to correct that problem.if she hadn't the school and the district would have screwed up Angies's academic track towards college.

I am tired of teachers bitching about how many hours they work. Most professional put in more than a 40 hour week. We do not get tenue or months off during the year. We would be fired if we produced the results of our current educational system.

​@Richard Fox One of the Catholic schools I went to taught that Jesus is a socialist and that the Bible teaches us to live the way of Marx and Lenin.

@Richard Fox I know and that's why the Catholic Church has the Magisterium to guide the church into how to correctly interpret the Bible. I'm fine if a public school promotes socialism but the Catholic Church has always condemned socialism so it should have no place in a Catholic school.

@Richard Fox Exactly!

@@ChrisZoomER No school should be promoting socialism.

@@CatholicTraditional Agreed.

Merit pay in the truest sense recognizes the dedication, expertise, and effort of teachers with their students on a case by case basis. This treats every instructor as an individual, versus a collective group assigned a given demographic and aptitude set of students. I instruct both dev ed and honors/AP students in a challenging post-secondary setting. The amount of time and effort I put in is double or even quadruple that of my counterparts as a result. However, I'm paid the same. I would welcome merit pay.

@@renadamTWELVE I guess it depends on how they did merit based pay. We have never been told exactly what that would look like. If its pay based on hard work; dedication; time spent with students; time spent with parents etc that's fine. It's just that when we personally think of merit based pay we think of every student being on par at the end of the year which is really what my husbands school expects already even without adopting merit based pay. I would agree that bad teachers need to go. If they adopt merit based pay they need to be really specific on what that means.

How about merit pay based on student and parent evaluation? My son had fantastic teachers one year and then horrible verbally abusive one the next. The bad experience traumatized him for many years. After we got the lottery of a Montessori charter school, the difference in education quality changed dramatically for the better. Now my litter one will stick with the Montessori community no matter where we live.

"Is this CRT in the room with us right now?"

@@boredd9410 What are you talking about

Not to mention, teaching children the alphabet agenda

It's been failing (on purpose) for decades. Those issues are just some of the last nails in the coffin.

Plus never forget that public school teachers aren’t even allowed to discipline the kids. The kids are literally permitted to run out of the classrooms to wander the halls and nobody’s allowed to lay a finger on them. And if one of the other kids starts beating up your kid the teacher’s not even allowed to break up the fight. I was literally asked to resign for rescuing one of the kids from a beating because I in turn started beating the assailant until he broke off the assault. After all, what else can you really do? I initially only dragged the assailant off of his victim but then he of course starting punching me in the head. Was I supposed to permit him to knock me out? I don’t think so. It is nothing but the complete absurdity of idiocy. Always vote no on school levies. And in any event you can’t permit any room for nuance in public school instruction because everything is pitched to the dull normal level of obviousness bordering on obliviousness. I literally had parents calling me unpatriotic while teaching the American Revolution at parochial school because I mentioned the fact that the first Episcopalian bishop in this country had been a Tory chaplain to the British army during the revolution which is why George Washington would never speak to him even though Washington was an Episcopalian. And that Ben Franklin’s son had been the royalist governor of Pennsylvania or that Paul Revere didn’t say “the British are coming” for the obvious reason that the colonists themselves were also British then. Anything taught at less than the university level in this country is literally gauged to imbeciles unless you’re at one of the elite boarding schools catering to rich kids. I know this because I guided boarding school kids at canoe camp up in Canada.Half the other guides were teaching at elite eastern boarding schools. I quit teaching 35 years ago to become a deck hand in the merchant marine which ought to show you how little I think of teaching.

I apologize for this lengthy response, but as a parent, a U.S. citizen, & a retired school nurse & educator, I'm very interested in this topic. Most children, IMHO, are easily distracted at home if they don't have adult supervision in the room with them. They also need the socialization w/ other kids, good, bad, or ugly. If we coddle them & don't let them learn early the moral & practical skills that come with interacting w/ others (e.g., bullies, opposing world views, differing cultures), then they lose out on valuable life skills. Being around people who are the same as them is not only boring & "safe," but it lulls them into a false sense of security & curtails a whole world of learning opportunities that they might not get otherwise. They also need opportunities to talk w/ their parents &/or teachers about these interactions in order to become skilled in correctly assessing & participating in resolving moral dilemmas, socialization skills, critical thinking, & informed decision-making. Personally, I think the money for educating our children needs to follow each child, so I'm VERY pro-voucher program & think that teachers may need to up their creativity, pedagogical teaching skills, & self-directed learning if they are competing with other learning environments & systems (e.g., parochial vs home schooling vs private) to give children the BEST education possible.

I mean, companies are naturally going to be anti-union and will always feed you anti-union propaganda. You need to decide for yourselves if unionization is a good thing, if your working conditions are truly that bad. Usually they aren't.

Are you happy with your pay and benefits?

Yes, there is such a union. Christian Educators Association International. I left my public school union and joined CEAI. Too bad this video did not mention that many teachers can choose which union to support. The dues are less, too.

@@MM-cb6fz if it were possible to join this union individually versus collectively, I would do so. Unfortunately... not possible.

​@@MM-cb6fzChristian Educators is an oxymoron

YES they are. I made a comment supporting this video and even provided a few links to support my claim and it was deleted and my account was blocked for 2 days for even being allowed to reply to ANYTHING

Agreed 100%. Do we take our Medicare cards to government hospitals? Hardly ever unless there’s a big county hospital where you live. But the county hospital is usually the hospital of last resort for those with no hospitalization insurance. Then the first thing they do is sign you up for their insurance or get you on Medicaid. Public schools in the USA are like the educational equivalent of Medicaid for the indigent, especially in the big cities.

Yeah, let's throw young kids into the system of "haves" and "have-nots". Rich kids go to good schools and poor kids can go to the fields to work. Talking about morality. Without any implemented standards, any school can teach anything and ultimately your kids will learn nothing. Oh yes, that pi is equal to 3 because the Buybol says so.

“Daycare for knuckleheads”. 😆 I love it. Warehousing tomorrow’s burger flippers and delinquents.

@@genxx2724 That’s essentially what it comes down to reductio ad absurdum. At the inner city high school I worked at they would get rid of the real knuckleheads by first double checking their current address, then transferring them to another building if they’d moved without telling anyone, but most comical to me at least was the dodge wherein undesirables over the age of sixteen could be reclassified as “work/study” with their work assignment being something totally lame such as Burger King. We had this one kid who worked at Burger King and would violate the no hats inside the building rule by proudly wearing his paper Burger King crown. He was finally rewarded for his near constant irritation of the staff by a vice principal making him literally “career designated” as a burger flipper.

Considering how little it pays if teaching proves to be unpleasant then you can forget about it. And the bar to entry is low since a bachelor’s degree is simply the middle class union card which everyone is expected to get more as finishing school than anything else, even if you really want to become a carpenter. So it’s really less than nothing to shrug off teaching once you’ve found out for yourself that it’s a pain in the ass. People get certified as teachers just to avoid the language requirement with a regular BA which includes no job credential. Then once you realize that most teachers are charlatans who just fake it assuming that no one will notice it becomes impossible to have any respect for the other teachers as well. The curriculum needs to be standardized and put online so there’s no difference between online academy and regular public school. And regular teachers should not be permitted to just wing it all the time, worksheet the kids to death, and basically never even talk to the kids which is a common observation of teaching aides in my experience. Teaching aides I worked with routinely said the other teachers would simply pass out worksheets, then walk around repeating “sit down and shut up” for the entire period before saying “pass your worksheets to the front of the class”. Then the dependence on teachers as lecturers needs to be overcome. Then perhaps teachers could function more as tutors. But as a kid if you’re entirely dependent upon getting all of your motivation from teachers pressuring you to do your reading in the first place, because you have no intellectual curiosity, then you’re basically doomed and would certainly never survive even your freshman year of college.

Do you argue for a national law while saying education should go back to the states? One or the other but not both. I would agree to Dissolve the the Department of Education and Severely limit redistribution between the states of funds for education.

Unions are good sometimes for teachers. If the teachers are accused of something, the union gets legal representation for them and advice. If a principal is picking on a teacher, the union can get involved to be a voice for the teacher. Their collective bargaining is responsible for good pay and benefits. (I do wish they'd back up merit pay though. Although, the problem is how do you define merit pay? Bad teachers are excellent at performing well for observation.) That's where their work should end though. I also concur with dissolving the Dept of Ed.

1st amendment

Where I live, school choice is written in state law. BTW, what assurances are there that a "good" teacher will have job security or make a decent wage? There are Harvey Weinstein- types in all professions, including education administration.

@@ga6589 I'm thankful school choice is written into your state's law. I'm hopeful it may become law in my state. You said, "what assurances are there". Well, in this imperfect world, nothing is guaranteed. But!, there are things that work better than others and some are worse than others. I just think that the teachers unions are creating far more problems than they solve. Since laws are in place for prosecution and punishment of Harvey Weinstein types, there is a venue to get justice for those wronged; without having protection for poorly functioning teachers. Children's welfare should be a higher priority than the collective protected by teacher unions.