Breaking: Wisconsin Supreme Court reinstates Walker’s collective bargaining law

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It’s all for the students. Our selfless teacher’s union just wants what’s best for the student.

[/sarcasm]
 
meltzerboy said:
I didn’t say that teachers’ unions have received all that they demand; that’s why they must continue to fight for both teachers and students.
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One thing I like about old school Oklahoma Democrats is that they are for the most part good honest folk. We just voted one out last election who wasn’t, but the one before him was a farmer who knew everyone in the county.

As we have watched our rural schools run out of money and drop extracurricular programs, before he was killed in a farming accident. He said if we ever want the schools to be as prosperous as they once were we better get the teachers union out of them.

That’s a real Democrat for you.
 
ExLibris said:
It’s all for the students. Our selfless teacher’s union just wants what’s best for the student.

[/sarcasm]
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Just as a parent cannot provide the best for their children if they are not functioning well, so a teacher cannot teach effectively if they are not given the proper resources and training.
 
meltzerboy said:
Just as a parent cannot provide the best for their children if they are not functioning well, so a teacher cannot teach effectively if they are not given the proper resources and training.
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I would agree, but it seems that this typically translates to the demand for more benefits and greater pay.

I can only speak for California, where we are strangled to death by the teacher’s union.
 
bbarrick8383 said:
One thing I like about old school Oklahoma Democrats is that they are for the most part good honest folk. We just voted one out last election who wasn’t, but the one before him was a farmer who knew everyone in the county.

As we have watched our rural schools run out of money and drop extracurricular programs, before he was killed in a farming accident. He said if we ever want the schools to be as prosperous as they once were we better get the teachers union out of them.

That’s a real Democrat for you.
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Perhaps the schools in a rural county in Oklahoma already have small class size due to a smaller population in which everyone, like the farmer you mention, knows their neighbor. Therefore they may have less need for teacher unions. But if you’re talking about urban centers such as New York City and Chicago, you’d better have some kind of leadership to represent teachers; otherwise, superintendents and district administrators will eat them alive.
 
ExLibris said:
I would agree, but it seems that this typically translates to the demand for more benefits and greater pay.

I can only speak for California, where we are strangled to death by the teacher’s union.
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I don’t know about California; but in New York, teachers have received a reduction in pay in comparison to the increased standard of living. The main complaint of many teachers is not so much the salary and the benefits as it is the working conditions.
 
meltzerboy said:
Perhaps the schools in a rural county in Oklahoma already have small class size due to a smaller population in which everyone, like the farmer you mention, knows their neighbor. Therefore they may have less need for teacher unions. But if you’re talking about urban centers such as New York City and Chicago, you’d better have some kind of leadership to represent teachers; otherwise, superintendents and district administrators will eat them alive.
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We just solved part of the problem. We put the power of firing the teachers back into the hands of the school boards. Rather than letting the union tie it up in court, if the board says your fired, you might as well pack your bags because the union can’t save you.
 
Scott_Lafrance said:
Here, read this and tell me if Tom Woods accepts the authority of the Catholic Church?

tomwoods.com/books/how-the-catholic-church-built-western-civilization/
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It’s clear that Dr Woods has a problem with the Church’s social doctrine. He refers to Papal teaching in this area as “dubious”. Now, defined doctrine (and the encyclicals of John Paul II make clear that Church teaching on the moral basis of economics is defined doctrine) must be accepted in toto. We cannot pick and choose which doctrines we want to accept. I believe the common term for one who does so is “cafeteria Catholic”. That term applies, and rightly so, to those who dissent from the Church’s teaching on sexual morality. Well, it also applies to those who dissent from the Church’s teaching on any other matter, including economics.

Those who want to learn what the Church teaches should focus on Papal encyclicals and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, not laymen who find Church social doctrine “dubious” and base their opinions on erroneous sources like the Late Scholastics.
 
gnjsdad said:
It’s clear that Dr Woods has a problem with the Church’s social doctrine. He refers to Papal teaching in this area as “dubious”. Now, defined doctrine (and the encyclicals of John Paul II make clear that Church teaching on the moral basis of economics is defined doctrine) must be accepted in toto. We cannot pick and choose which doctrines we want to accept. I believe the common term for one who does so is “cafeteria Catholic”. That term applies, and rightly so, to those who dissent from the Church’s teaching on sexual morality. Well, it also applies to those who dissent from the Church’s teaching on any other matter, including economics.

Those who want to learn what the Church teaches should focus on Papal encyclicals and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, not laymen who find Church social doctrine “dubious” and base their opinions on erroneous sources like the Late Scholastics.
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I think it’s interesting the debate has turned to Dr. Wood’s Catholic credentials when the quote from the article is actually one from Dr. Edward Chamberlin.

The Compendium is clear. Unions are only endorsed by the Church when they do not act as political entities (which they do) and accept the right to work (which they don’t always do).
 
meltzerboy said:
Evidently, you’re not a teacher and therefore have little idea about how teachers’ unions fight for the benefit of not only teachers, but also students. We as a society would be much poorer, in every sense, without unions fighting for the equal rights of all.
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I see how they fight for the benefit of teachers, but it is clear that they fight to the detriment of students. Our society is much poorer, in every sense, because of the poor policies forced on our schools by the unions. Tenure makes it near impossible to remove lousy teachers - who get paid the same as great teachers - and has caused the decline of our education system in comparison to other developed countries.
 
Borealis said:
The teachers unions fight for the benefit of students? Why, then, are they unanimously and adamantly opposed to school vouchers, which would allow students and their parents to choose the school they wish to have their child attend, so as to ensure the best possible education?

Teachers unions fight for the benefit of teachers unions, and nothing else.
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👍
 
meltzerboy said:
Just as a parent cannot provide the best for their children if they are not functioning well, so a teacher cannot teach effectively if they are not given the proper resources and training.
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Typical liberal argument - we are failing because we still haven’t spent enough…
  1. We’ve increased the amount of money we spend on education dramatically over the years and it has not improved our schools. As the documentary I mentioned earlier shows, even the well-heeled suburban schools, such as the one they highlight in Redwood City, CA, have a high level of failure. More resources. :rolleyes:
  2. Studies show that the biggest impact is better teachers. The union prevents the removal of lousy teachers, therefore they hinder the biggest impact that could be made to our schools and our kids.
 
meltzerboy said:
Teachers’ unions fight for students by demanding better working conditions for teachers, which means reductions in class size; increased funding for poor school districts to purchase technology such as computers and videos; more effective teacher development and mentoring programs for new teachers as well as ongoing professional training and workshops for more experienced teachers; equity in hiring practices and salary scales set by administrators, based on academic credentials and experience. All of these measures translate into better instruction and improved performance by students.
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The statistics say otherwise. The more money that is spent on education, the worse students perform. The unions are not helping the students; smaller class sizes means simply hiring more teachers, which means more union dues are collected, which means more taxpayer money is funneled into reelecting Democrats. It has nothing to do with the students, and the clain that it is has been proven to be a complete lie.
 
gnjsdad said:
It’s clear that Dr Woods has a problem with the Church’s social doctrine. He refers to Papal teaching in this area as “dubious”. Now, defined doctrine (and the encyclicals of John Paul II make clear that Church teaching on the moral basis of economics is defined doctrine) must be accepted in toto. We cannot pick and choose which doctrines we want to accept. I believe the common term for one who does so is “cafeteria Catholic”. That term applies, and rightly so, to those who dissent from the Church’s teaching on sexual morality. Well, it also applies to those who dissent from the Church’s teaching on any other matter, including economics.

Those who want to learn what the Church teaches should focus on Papal encyclicals and the Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, not laymen who find Church social doctrine “dubious” and base their opinions on erroneous sources like the Late Scholastics.
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A papal encyclical is NOT doctrine. Unless His Holiness puts out something in the line of Ordinatio Sacerdotalis, it is merely guidance, not doctrine. Since economics is not one of the things that the pope has the authority to preach* ex cathedra* on, even if he did issue a proclamation that stated what the “only acceptable system of economics is”, we wouldn’t have to listen, because it has nothing to do with faith or morals.

And a cafeteria Catholic is one who picks and choose which established doctrines to follow, not which pastoral letters one wishes to examine critically for content. Nice try though. Is that the new line of attack for liberal Catholics? Pull up papal encyclicals, call it doctrine, and then say “you aren’t following this to the letter, you’re a cafeteria Catholic”?
 
gnjsdad said:
I’ll post the following excerpt from an article by Thomas Woods. Then readers can decide whether or not Mr Woods accepts Catholic social teaching…

*By any definition, it lay well beyond the competence of the Magisterium to presume to describe the workings of economic relationships. Catholics who make this point are routinely accused of denying the Church’s right to make moral statements pertaining to economic activity. This criticism is completely baseless, and only serves to distract attention from the substantive issues at stake. … To maintain that private property is just, or that people ought to be upright and honest in their economic activities, requires nothing more than simple reflection on the teaching of Christ, the Fathers, and natural law itself. The same cannot be said for exhortations to employers that they pay a ‘just wage,’ for embedded within such counsel is a set of unproven assumptions about how economic relationships work, and the belief that all that stands between the world today and the great society of tomorrow is wise legislation, rather than the capital investment which is alone capable of increasing the overall stock of wealth. **One hesitates to describe Catholic social teaching as an abuse of papal and ecclesiastical power, but surely the attempt to impose, as moral doctrine binding the entire Catholic world, principles that derive from the popes’ intrinsically fallible reasoning within a secular discipline like economics, seems dubious. ***At the very least, it appears to constitute an indefensible extension of the prerogatives of the Church’s legitimate teaching office into areas in which it possesses no inherent competence or divine protection from error.
lewrockwell.com/woods/woods8.html
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From that same article you linked, also citing Rerum Novarum:

This defense of the fundamental justice of the free market, although not altogether abandoned (the popes certainly do not advocate socialism), was nevertheless eclipsed to a significant degree in modern papal pronouncements, beginning most obviously with Rerum Novarum (1891), clearly the seminal Church document on the question of capital and labor. In the face of labor agitation and unrest throughout the West, Pope Leo XIII decided to issue a pronouncement on what was then referred to as the social question. The encyclical discusses at some length the justice and necessity of private property, and for that reason utterly rejects socialism as a legitimate economic system. The Pope was not especially sympathetic to the use of the strike, and advocated that government intervene in order to settle such disputes between employer and employed in order that the “grave inconvenience” of such work stoppages be vitiated.
Also from Rerum Novarum:

Leo XIII himself cautioned that Rerum Novarum not be considered an endorsement of this or that particular program; he thought Catholics ought to be free, taking Catholic principles for granted, to discuss the best way to bring Church teaching to bear on current problems. “If I were to pronounce on any single matter of a prevailing economic problem,” the Pope later wrote, “I should be interfering with the freedom of men to work out their own affairs. Certain cases must be solved in the domain of facts, case by case as they occur…. [M]en must realize in deeds those things, the principles of which have been placed beyond dispute…. [T]hese things one must leave to the solution of time and experience.”
Furthermore:
“In determining the amount of the wage,” the Pope goes on, “the condition of a business and of the one carrying it on must also be taken into account; for it would be unjust to demand excessive wages which a business cannot stand without its ruin and consequent calamity to the workers.” Pius XI does recognize, then, that wage rates are obviously subject to some upper bound beyond which they cannot go. He concludes: “Hence it is contrary to social justice when, for the sake of personal gain and without regard for the common good, wages and salaries are excessively lowered or raised; and this same social justice demands that wages and salaries be so managed, through agreement of plans and wills, in so far as can be done, as to offer to the greatest possible number the opportunity of getting work and obtaining suitable means of livelihood.” Such statements help to underscore why the late Scholastics favored leaving wage determination to the “common estimation” of the market, since any other method is inherently arbitrary and leads to hopeless complications. Thus Pius realizes that there is a limit to the wage level the market can bear, but he is able to offer nothing better than a vague appeal to “agreement of plans and wills” in order to determine what that limit was. He rejects out of hand the fundamental posture of liberal economics according to which the market left to itself “would have a principle of self direction which governs it much more perfectly than would the intervention of any created intellect.”
 
meltzerboy said:
Perhaps the schools in a rural county in Oklahoma already have small class size due to a smaller population in which everyone, like the farmer you mention, knows their neighbor. Therefore they ***may ***have less need for teacher unions. But if you’re talking about urban centers such as New York City and Chicago, you’d better have some kind of leadership to represent teachers; otherwise, superintendents and district administrators will eat them alive.
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Perhaps not…

Maybe not…

How does possibly knowing someone change a business transaction? Is it your claim that teachers in Chicago and New York City are too naive to negotiate a wage?
 
Borealis said:
The statistics say otherwise. The more money that is spent on education, the worse students perform. The unions are not helping the students; smaller class sizes means simply hiring more teachers, which means more union dues are collected, which means more taxpayer money is funneled into reelecting Democrats. It has nothing to do with the students, and the clain that it is has been proven to be a complete lie.
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Of course the money must be used wisely and efficiently; but to assert that more money means worse student performance is not meaningful to me. Smaller class size is the result of hiring more teachers only if the district can afford to hire more teachers, who must be paid more if they live in an area of the country where the cost of living is higher.
 
SamH said:
Perhaps not…
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Not too naive; rather, not powerful enough to be respected by the central administration. Come now, you must have some idea about the role that employers play in large institutions: they try to get away with whatever they can and provide as few resources as legally permitted for the least money possible. It’s part of the capitalist structure of business, unfortunately.
 
meltzerboy said:
Teachers’ unions fight for students by demanding better working conditions for teachers, which means reductions in class size; increased funding for poor school districts to purchase technology such as computers and videos; more effective teacher development and mentoring programs for new teachers as well as ongoing professional training and workshops for more experienced teachers; equity in hiring practices and salary scales set by administrators, based on academic credentials and experience. All of these measures translate into better instruction and improved performance by students.
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My wife is a teacher, my sister is a teacher, my brother in law is a teacher that is now a principal. All three of them think this post is funny.
 
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