Teachers and The President Are United

CAT Tracks Editor's Note:

Dear John:

Do you really believe what you just wrote...

...or are you just shillin'?

Praise for President Obama for being a smart politician (or having a smart campaign manager)...knowing that the Chicago Teachers' Strike against his friend and former White House Chief of Staff was a lose-lose situation...knowing that during the run-up to election day was probably not a good time to bash teachers?

You throw Mitt Romney under the school bus for saying what he surely believes (which I strongly oppose), but praise a President of the United States whose actions have spoken louder (in having a negative impact on public education)than even George W. Bush's wayward words!

And your closing paragraph...

...is telling!

Yeah, President Obama is all those (bad) things and more!

I won't be silent (to my very limited audience/choir.) However, I will be President Obama-like...will stay away from a lose-lose situation. Even if I sent a copy of my anti-Obama missives to the President, he would ignore them (if they made it through the White House communications screeners. And...I would likely wind up on some "enemies list" for special attention come income tax filing time!)

But...

I shall remain on the sidelines and not vote for either one of these unknowing or knowing enemies of public education (for what it's worth. A friend pointed out that she would allow me my pique, would not try to change my mind about not voting...because President Obama would carry Illinois anyway. Sigh...tilting at windmills.)

Politicians at the local, state, and national level will only pay attention to teachers when teachers quit turning the other cheek, when teachers quit sending teacher-bashing politicians back to office.

Yes, Mitt Romney will assuredly be worse for public education that President Obama. But, maybe that's what it will take to finally energize teachers, parents, politicians, and pundits.

A notorious Vietnam era analogy may be chilling, but true...

...maybe we really do need to destroy the village (public education) to save it.

Maybe we need to take the dagger out of the hands of our friends and let our enemies commit a chainsaw massacre.

Mitt's out-of-touch gaffes are finally opening the eyes of the non-rich, activating the "99%" in ways that scruffy protesters could not. Turn Mitt and his kind loose on public education and maybe the teacher-bashing public will finally come to their senses and see what Mitt and his kind really want...a segregated school system where their kids don't have to associate with the riff-raff of any color, a privatized school system where their big business buddies make big bucks, where teachers are like Walmart "Associates"...cheap and easily replaced.

It's time to pull back the curtain and see the brave new world of "reformed" public education...