By SHAUN KENNEY
It’s being called an “Arab Spring for Teachers” by the UK Guardian. Hundreds of striking Oklahoma teachers are marching on their state capitol, where once again teachers unions have parents by the throat.
Of course, the one sure loser in all of this are the children. Not only do their parents have to make other accommodations in this hostage-taking scenario, the children themselves simply aren’t being taught regardless as to whether or not teachers remain in the classroom or not.
Consider the fact that national standardized test scores have been in a steady decline over the last 15 years. That’s right — in a nation that spends more money per pupil on education than any other industrialized nation in the world? Our administrators — the six-figure salaried overseers who direct the energies of the teachers unions themselves — merely wage war on parents in order to force the hands of policymakers . . . who in turn, punish the parents further in order to subsidize a mediocre result.
Our children deserve better than the mediocrity of outraged teachers unions, all of which is directed by a few well-heeled apparatchiks unwilling to tolerate reform or alternatives.
One clear alternative would be student vouchers. Another would be independent charter schools, a path forward that has been regulated to death by teachers unions across America in a conspiracy to make them appear as for-profit institutions which — because they are forced to play by the same rules as public schools — provide an equally mediocre result.
Could we imagine what a vibrant, healthy school system would look like? Surely it would look nothing like the nineteenth-century system armed with twentieth-century tools and mentalities that are expected to compete in a twenty-first-century environment. Perhaps a one-size-fits-all education system might actually get the diverse outcomes they scream about but rarely actualize?
Silly me . . . I forgot. This isn’t about diversity, but drab Soviet conformity.
Don’t worry — this so-called Arab Spring in education is coming to a state near you. West Virginia just saw its teachers’ strike drone on for 11 days before exacting its demands on a legislature held hostage to want. Kentucky saw their schools close in early April. Arizona’s teachers are threatening to strike; North Carolina and Virginia are threatening likewise.
. . . And what’s to stop them? Like any other hostage situation, if parents are just willing to throw money at a problem to make it go away, then like any loan shark or bad creditor threatening bad things (or else Twitchy might break your legs), parents are going to pay them just as quickly as any Corleone or protection racket.
Quite a mediocre education system you have there, America. Shame if anything would happen to it.
As for adopting the moniker of an “Arab Spring” for this teachers’ revolt, one should ask the Syrians, Libyans, Egyptians, Algerians, Jordanians, Qataris, Kurds, and Saudis (among others) and five million refugees how that turned out in the end.
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Planned Parenthood — the same one who wants to teach your kindergartners about the birds and bees — has decided that Disney princesses need abortions in a “tweet” issued over Twitter (how ridiculous is the word “tweet” anyhow?)
Of course, everyone remembers that part in that very short film Sleeping Beauty where the King and Queen — just before Maleficent barges into the christening — follow the advice of the royal ethicist Peter Singer (professor of ethics at Princeton University) and euthanize baby Princess Aurora right there on the spot. Or heck — why be gender specific? Remember when Geppetto chopped up Pinocchio into six pieces and sold his wooden parts to the greedy local Planned Parentwood?
Good times.
Of course, if Pinocchio gets to be a real boy, one has to think that babies in utero might get to be real boys and real girls, too. Except, of course, they already are real — just denied the basic human right to exist by an industry more covetous of federal taxpayer funding than they are about protecting babies.
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This Easter, it is estimated that 30,000 people in the United States became Catholic through the rite of catechumens — meaning that they are doing so by their own free choice as converts to the Holy Catholic and Apostolic Faith. This is on top of the hundreds of thousands of Catholics baptized every year as infants.
One sometimes wonders why we are suffering through all sorts of scandal and apostasy during these times. It is easy to forget that there have never been as many Christians alive today than at any other point in human history.
When you add on the number of Christian saints who are praying for us right now — either in Heaven or with the Holy Souls in Purgatory — then it is no small wonder why the enemy is so frantic to punish, harm, and maim the Body of Christ.
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This will be late in coming, but as a personal favor I would ask you to pray for a gentleman who is undergoing a rather high-risk procedure on Friday, April 6 (this edition of The Wanderer will more than likely reach you after the procedure is finished).
Therefore, you and I are about to engage in a sort of time travel, where the outcome is already predetermined, but as a sort of mystical “loan” against the economy of grace I am asking for your prayers and supplication to the Blessed Mother and Sacred Heart of Jesus. No, I don’t pretend to understand how it all works — but all I know is that it will work!
Just a Hail Mary and Glory Be will do, and I’m sure all things will turn out well. Thank you.
Your Thoughts, Please
Of course, I am succeeding (but not replacing) the inestimable Mr. James K. Fitzpatrick for the First Teachers column. Please feel free to send any correspondence for First Teachers to Shaun Kenney, c/o First Teachers, 5289 Venable Rd., Kents Store, VA 23084 — or if it is easier, simply send me an e-mail with First Teachers in the subject line to: svk2cr@virginia.edu.
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