Teacher's unions have worn out the welcome for teachers, and firefighter and police unions are working hard towards the same end for their members. It can't happen soon enough in my opinion.

Why do I need a union?

Yes. 2 Union workers are more likely than their non-union counterparts to receive health care and pension benefits. More than eight out of ten union members are covered by health insurance and have a pension plan — versus fewer than half of those not in a union.

There you have it - despite the claims on NR and at other places that public union workers are toiling for near slave wages, their own union tells them how much better it is for them to be a member of the union.

As usual, the union mouthpieces have no problem with telling different stories at different times to gain sympathy or win an argument. Conservatives complain public union members are overcompensated? Claim they're actually underpaid compared to the private sector. Union members unsure of the benefits of being in the union? Tell them that they're much better off than non union private sector employees.

Hear, hear, Jay. Too bad thoughts like this are portrayed as "attacking teachers," with the usual wounded-lamb, "how dare you?!" indignation from a group that pretends be nothing but well-meaning, beleagured and underappreciated molders of children's minds. Man, that schtick is old!

As Thomas Sowell has pointed out, education majors tend to come from the low scorers of higher education. It's sad that the good teachers (and there are plenty) have to be soiled in reputation along with the bad, but I wish we could drop the pretense that these people are all angelic and selfless.

Maybe it's just because I'm in flyover country, but teachers' unions don't seem to be as common here as they are where most of the pundits live.

Kind of like autoworkers in the North vs. in the South.

I have it on very good authority that teaching at an urban school (not the kind that most NROniks' children would be attending) is kind of like being an unarmed correctional officer.

Very different from an office environment.

Sir:
As a lifelong educator, your comments stung my pride. Yet I am consoled by the remembrance of Dr. Johnson on impudence: “A flea may bite a horse and make it flinch, yet a flea is still a flea and a horse remains a horse.”
I leave it to you to sort out the parties.

Long ago, when I was in 6th grade, our teachers went on strike. I recall my classmates being on a bus, crossing the picket lines to take the kids to school (they were scab bus drivers, as the bus drivers are members of the teachers union here). My friends had to duck down in their seats as the busses crossed the pickets, because the picketers were THROWING THINGS at the busses full of school kids.

Screw teachers unions. I come from a long line of educators, but teachers unions have the interests of teachers, not children, as their foremost charge, and it shows.

One hundred years ago when you had children working in coal mines alongside the adults and all the injuries and deaths from poor working conditions, etc - there was a need for unions to protect the workers. Since when did working in a school (with the exception of some urban schools probably since the 1960s) did teachers need protection like the coal miners of old?

I don't believe that teachers have a cush job, have it easy and all that. They have tremendous patience, and many of them truly love to teach.

But once again, unions have done their best to ruin an industry. First the steel and auto companies, now the education system.

If these Wisconsin teachers think they are so underpaid, they need to talk with the teachers at my kids' private school. They get paid about 2/3's of a public school teacher. But they all LOVE the kids and love seeing them learn and this creates a very positive experience for the kids.

Surely there are islands (mostly rural) of old-fashioned excellent teaching, but I don't think this problem will ever be corrected, at least not until most parents home-school or send their children to private/parochial schools, for several reasons:
1.Our demographic are changing radically, and the teacher's job (discipline, conflicting values, language difficulties) has become much more complex and bureaucratic.
2. The relatively good pay and unionism have attracted some (many?) who have no 'calling' for the profession.
3. In urban schools, many parents are not supportive of what the parents are trying to do. A friend of mine from Russia two years ago gave up being a middle school chemistry teacher in Houston (a very good one) and became a pharmacist because she could not accomplish much without the parents' help - and there was none).
4. In many cities, the best and brightest (and supportive parents) have gone to private schools.
5. Public schools are top-heavy with administration and political correctness.
6. Many teachers themselves are not well-educated.
7. Teachers' unions have a left-wing political agenda. Brainwashing is rampant is public schools. My oldest granddaughter (who is in kindergarten) can read "The Boxcar Children" to me aloud with little to no help, but learned much of that at home and at Grandpa's. At school, she learned who Martin Luther King was (but not George Washington), that we have "winter holidays" in December, and on Valentine's Day that she must give valentines to the kid who hit her, because 'we must like everyone.' The only reason she is in public school is that the parochial school said she was a year too young.

Sigh.