For over a thousand generations the Unions...

...were the guardians of peace and justice in Wisconsin, before the dark times, before the Empire. A young Governor name Scott Walker, a former Milwaukee County Supervisor inspired by the Tea Party, turned to evil and helped the Republicans hunt down and destroy the Unions. Walker was seduced by the Dark Side of Politics...

I've posted quite a bit as of late about politics, which I tend not to do. As a substitute teacher, I spend my days as a stranger in several different schools. Almost no one knows me, and I know no one really well, so I don't share anything that might expose me as a right-wing nut, and therefore undesirable as a future colleague. I do spend a lot of time listening, especially as teachers discuss (sometimes rant and fume about) Scott Walker and his legislation.

I've come to believe that a lot - not all, but a large number - of teachers seem to believe teaching is set-apart from the other, lesser, careers one could choose, and they see themselves as "change agents". They are secular missionaries to the young; it is their life's purpose to educate the future generations, bringing them up with appropriate, modern, need I say, liberal beliefs.

Like the corrupt clergy of the Dark Ages, they believe they were "chosen" for a noble task and to question them is to question God. Like the Jedi of the Old Republic, they are blinded. Only it isn't Darth Sidious and the dark side of the Force, it's their own messianic beliefs about their societal importance.

Yes, teachers are important. We (I'll include myself for this part) prepare future citizens, and it is often a thankless, over-simplified job, but teaching is in the larger sense no more important than any other occupation. Society would grind to a halt if not for those lowly garbage collectors, mall clerks, daycare workers, and corporate employees. Times are tough and people are hurting, but it would amaze you how out of touch some teachers are.

One teacher today spoke about a colleague who, with the rise in benefit contributions and corresponding decline in take-home pay, might be unable to make his mortgage payments. I don't have a heart of stone, so I empathize with that other teacher, but he isn't losing his job like others are and have. Teachers also seem to leap to the worst-case scenario regarding the impact of ending collective bargaining.

"Next year there going to stick us in a classroom with 50 kids", "they'll have you teaching [fill in a subject for which you lack licensure]", "they'll tell us teachers make 30K in Texas, take it or leave it".

I've heard all of these, and none of them are likely. Teachers, as we all do, dislike big changes. However, they also seem to assume the worst of administration (all of whom are former teachers) and school boards (often overwhelmingly former teachers). Newsflash! They're in it "for the kids" too. You're not Norma Rae working in a textile mill in North Carolina, and the "man" isn't out to get you.

I love teaching, but I didn't become a teacher because I wanted to indoctrinate my students with a certain ideological view of history. I did it because I enjoy history, like kids, discovered I was good at teaching and thought that given all of these, teaching made sense.

My greatest hope out of all of this is that is "professionalizes" teaching and makes us realize that we don't need a union to "speak" for us to be successful teachers and appropriately well-off. I'd like to be able to tell people I'm a teacher without having them mutter about "3 months off in the summer" and "cadillac health plans". I don't know how to get from here to there any more than the young members of Solidarity in Poland knew how to get from Communism to the capitalist Free Market, but I know a it could be better and what we're doing isn't working.

Just think, if Scott Walker's ideas work out, he could be like Darth Vader, who saved the Jedi from themselves.