Education News

Among other understandings, teachers of America's elementary and high school students were always expected to set examples for their students.

Aside from the obvious of not seducing their students, public school teachers were expected to establish a certain sense of decorum, which mandate in my school district incorporated into the union contract the allowance: "Male teachers are permitted to remove their jackets in the classroom."

Times have changed. Radically.

Teacher-student assignations have become almost commonplace, student behavior has gone far beyond tossing spitballs and chewing gum, and teacher dress codes have gone the way of high-buttoned shoes. Aside from teachers hitting on students, other behavioral modifications on the part of teachers are much less forgivable, especially when the example they are setting is one of extreme misbehavior and lawlessness.

Teachers and other public servants in Wisconsin have the same rights accorded to every American under the First Amendment to the Constitution's prohibition against infringement on freedom of speech, interference with the right to peaceably assemble, and the right of petitioning governmental redress of grievances.

What teachers do not have the right or privilege to do is to disgrace themselves and their profession, to break laws, to interfere with government functions, or to shamelessly trash both their profession and themselves by allowing teacher and outside thugs to direct and dictate their criminal activities.

In Wisconsin, teachers protesting new Republican Governor Scott Walker's attempts to clean up the fiscal mess he inherited have reached new lows in their efforts to resist limitations on collective bargaining rights.

Despite Walker's offers of compromise, Wisconsin "educators" have abandoned their classroom responsibilities by calling in sick in droves, falsifying medical "sick notes," committing outright slander against their duly-elected representatives, and resorting to the same bullying tactics they decry in their schools, all of which are condoned by the nation's Bully-in-Chief, Barack Hussein Obama

Acting more like semi-civilized Third Worlders instead of American student role models, their protests are costing millions. Their illegal seizure, occupation, and trashing of the Capitol building in Madison have, to date, resulted in some $7.5 million in damages and clean-up costs for their cash-strapped state, costs to be borne by already overburdened taxpayers: "Estimates of damage to marble includes $6 million to repair damaged marble inside the Capitol, $1 million for damage outside and $500,000 for costs to supervise the damage."

The teacher and other unions reached rock bottom with death threats designed to intimidate not only Republican legislators who are struggling to achieve some fiscal sanity in the Badger State but their families as well.

One unedited, 2 paragraph email included the following polite threat which was more akin to a promise, replete with specific details on how the murders would occur:

"Please put your things in order because you will be killed and your families will also be killed due to your actions in the last 8 weeks. Please explain to them that this is because if we get rid of you and your families then itwill save the rights of 300,000 people and also be able to close the deficit that you have created. I hope you have a good time in hell. Read below for more information on possible scenarios in which you will die... So we have also built several bombs that we have placed in various locations around the areas in which we know that you frequent. This includes, your house, your car, the state capitol, and well I won't tell you all of them because that's just no fun."

The email concluded with, "Please make your peace with God as soon as possible and say goodbye to your loved ones we will not wait any longer. YOU WILL DIE!!!!."

(In late Wisconsin news, the disruptive unionists were forcibly removed from the Capitol by police in order for the legislators-sans Democrat senators who were still in hiding-to conduct the state's business.)

It's not mere coincidence that, as pandemonium reigns in Madison, chaotic failure reigns in America's public schools. Obama's Education Secretary Arnie Duncan, who had previously officiated at Chicago's record education failures, tore into George W. Bush's 2002 "No Child Left Behind" education reform law.

In effect, Duncan doesn't like NCLB's reasonable standards because they have worked too well. However, over the course of nine years America's teachers, school administrators, and state education departments were not capable of raising student and math skills. He "stressed the law is fundamentally broken and needs to be fixed this year, otherwise he forecast 82 percent of the schools [some 80,000 of 100,000] could miss testing targets. That would be up from 37 percent in 2010."

NCLB left too many kids behind and therefore should be revamped to make it appear as if those left behind really should be considered as doing just fine since the NCLB requisites were, well, too exacting and unreasonable.

Lower standards sufficiently and orangutans could graduate, and teachers and administrators and states would be off the hook. It's much easier to lower standards than to raise edcational levels.

Duncan's scheme-which is widely opposed-is the rough equivalent of the Wisconsin teachers' schemes in that they both are exercises in deception. Duncan wants to give up on improving education so more students can feel good about being nimrods. In Wisconsin, they're pretending to be protesting on principles and preserving rights whereas they are really attempting to perpetrate a venal fraud.