The role that teacher unions play in education is a complex one. Certainly, they can be easy to decry from time to time, but just as certainly, they aren't usually deserving of that treatment. More broadly, it is inconsistent to favor freedom, democracy, and capitalism but rail against the existence of unions.
To those doing the decrying, and to those like me simply interested in improving the quality of public school education, I ask a simple set of related questions:
Q: What do our teachers do well?By law, teachers have the right to unionize. In practice, Wayland teachers serve our children far better than the letter of their contract requires. And as to the cost of this service, while fully appreciating the financial pressures we all face, there are few expenditures of my family's funds that I value more than contributing to the livelihood of these teachers and therefore to the development of my children in particular and Wayland's children in general.
Q: What constructive suggestions do you have for where *and* how to improve both the art and business of teaching?
Thank you.
send me email at dieffenbach @ alum.mit.edu.