Then read the book title! This web site outlines the plot in 30 quick seconds by adjusting the book title. For those of you are book fans like me, you should spend some time looking through the archives.
Some examples:
And I am sure Mrs. Bowman would hate me for this one. ( Advanced English Teacher in high school and a great and gifted union teacher). She made us read one book a week with an in class essay due every Monday. Some of the best college preparation on the planet.
Obviously what made her such an excellent teacher was her union status.
Didn’t you read your books on papyrus? or where they stone tablets?
Wow, good thing you didn’t buy that bar in The Land of Smiles!!!!
She was a great teacher. Advanced English was a great class and helped me AP out of freshman English my freshman year in college. I still owe her a lot in terms of writing skills-which I found far more useful in my Navy career than the Calculus based physics they made me take. I only brought up the the fact that she was a in a union to point out that some union folks (many actually) care about their jobs. In Pittsburgh all teachers in township schools had to join the AFT.
Plus-I lived in a place that had high property taxes, and it showed in the quality of their schools.
Skippy, but when you were in high schools things were a bit different. I bet before you got to high school, they still had allowed spanking in school to keep unruly children in place. Now they don’t, it seems that every parent/student has the ACLU on speed dial to lodge a civil suit instead of letting sum snob kid get his a## whoopped when they need it.
I would also imagine that most of the students in your school had a working use of the English language, and the teachers celebrated holidays like Columbus Day and not worry about offending the Indians. I bet your high school mascot, or some other in the area was also an Indian or some derivative or warrior or braves.
The one pricipal I remember was Mr. Magro. Back when I first started school (1971) his policy was for all boys to have their shirts tucked in at all times. Even after coming in from recess, as we were lining up to enter the building he would walk the line and point with his paddle and say “tuck that shirt in young man.” If you got sent to his office by the teacher and it warranted a spanking, his door would be left open and you could hear the paddle if your room was close enough. I once heard a girl who had to call her parents on the phone for something she did say this phrase as soon as they picked up: “Momma, I’m in trouble” made to say that with the pricipal and the teacher standing right beside her. It took me a long time before I ever wore a shirt that was not tucked in, I always had the memory of Mr. Magro standing near.
My point is, I don’t think that it is bad for teachers to be in a union, my mom was in one (she had to belong to the Black teachers union when she first started because they wouldn’t let her join the white one until the schools were desegregated in the 70’s, when all of the Black teachers were forced to join and the Black teachers union and credit union was left just to die on the vine, but that’s another story), but that the unions have lost focus on what they are supposed to be doing.
They should be looking out for teachers in better ways instead of forcing school districts to keep bad ones (because they still have to pay dues) and giving to political parties/candidates when they may not be what an individual teacher believes in.
Hypothetical question Skippy, if the Navy had a union for Naval Aviators, and forced you to pay dues every month, would you really be behind their platform for repealing of DADT or back in the 90’s letting women fly combat missions? That’s the problem with unions, it’s fine to organize, but they need to understand there is a point where they have no business being involved in.
Maurice,
For the record-I don’t believe the military can be unionized. Its just too different from civilian society to work, plus the military involves things that no other profession should want or have to do.
Now that said-I think the military should have an advocacy group and that is its retirees and other veterans. And we are falling down on the job about raising hell with the current leadership about the things that are going on the military.
My only point was that I ws fortunate to go to a good public school. In my day there were not workarounds like charter schools and other such nonsense. There were public schools and there were private schools. That was it.
And if I had my way there would be just that again-we would be fixing our public schools and if people did not want to send their kids to public schools, then vay con dios, but thank you for paying your property taxes. Property taxes would only go to fund public schools. If you, like Chris Christie want your kid in Catholic school, then you will have to pay the tution on top of what you pay in property taxes.
But if there were a union in the military-I think in the 90’s it would have been focused on preventing IRAD’s and pay increases.
Skippy,
probably using a unioin in the Navy was not a clear as I wanted to make it, but you get my point. I know your tailhook association is some sort of advocacy group, but they are limited in what they can do. Just look at what happened to them after the convention in 1990 and how they had their activities curtailed and they were looked down on. I saw some of those videos in the open mike sessions, and from some of the comments in the crowd, they were not too keen on the direction that Naval Aviation was going.
Yet I am sure that the majority of them followed orders that they were given and carried out the reforms as ordered. I know we give up a lot of our personal liberties when we join and we must obey the orders handed down to us, but I don’t think teachers have that same obligation.
Teachers that disagree with the union face loosing their jobs or having to go along with policies that they don’t endorse, yet still have to have their dues money used to support it. That is what I think is the major problem with the unions. Teachers know what can be done to reform the schools, but the unions won’t allow it.
But I think deep down there is a big split among advocacy groups. Tailhook is a good example. The organization is pretty much the same as it ever was-it never condoned or set up the things that happened in 1991, rowdy JO’s did. They just created the convention and set up the vehicle.
But Tailhookers themselves are split on the changes that are occurring. You have proud members who are ecouraging their daughters to become aviators-something I never did, nor would I ever do. Not that she could not become one if she wished-she would just do it without my support.
Same with MOAA, they have causes they take on like Tricare and others they won’t touch, like the USFSPA. MOAA believes the USFSPA is a lost cause and there is a slight bit of “you should not have gotten divorced” in their language. Which is sad-becuase if they stood up for change in the law, people might listen.
But I think that divide represents the divide in our society. Young people are not as upset about gays etc as we are. Some are, but many are not.
There’s a huge lot of unionized army/navy dudes/dudettes. Winning law suits for getting sun burned which is pretty much all the Irish Army can do. It will be an interesting stroll when the US walks off the world stage and leaves it to all the rest.
Interesting theology there with regard to public schools. They’re so fucked funded with our $ but some people decide to send their kids to private schools. You know what is truly fucked? People that try to send their kids to good public schools but get prosecuted and jailed for their misguided attempts or ones that bought into a neighborhood with good schools but find that the Fed insists on bussing their kids to a far distant worthless school.
oh yeah, I live just across the street from both elementary school and high school. Could you even imagine if the system told me I had to bus my daughter to another school?