Taxpayer Unions

It may be worth contemplating what President Franklin Delano Roosevelt said in 1937 about public unions as referenced in this Washington Times article linked below.

FDR vs. Wisconsin Teachers - Washington Times

FDR: "All Government employees should realize that the process of collective bargaining, as usually understood, cannot be transplanted into the public service. It has its distinct and insurmountable limitations when applied to public personnel management. The very nature and purposes of Government make it impossible for administrative officials to represent fully or to bind the employer in mutual discussions with Government employee organizations. The employer is the whole people, who speak by means of laws enacted by their representatives in Congress. Accordingly, administrative officials and employees alike are governed and guided, and in many instances restricted, by laws which establish policies, procedures, or rules in personnel matters."

I recommend the reader Google John Taylor Gatto who wrote The Underground History of American Education. My older grandson, Isaiah, at age six wanted me to read this book to him; and then his younger brother, Cole, age four chimed in that yes, for me to read to them from this book. This book had turned Isaiah's agony in trying to learn to read the way the public school set it up, to joy by my creating a "secret code book" for Isaiah, from using John Taylor Gatto's ideas in his book.

Kids listen and when Isaiah heard me talking to my son about what I was learning from Taylor's book, Isaiah went over and started flipping through the book. I paid attention and followed his interests. At age six and four both boys sat with me at the table for two hours with no fidgeting and no having to go to the bathroom. They were engrossed about the real world of adults, about the lives of Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson.

We were a highly literate nation in 1831 (ask Alexis de Tocqueville) then by 1854 or 1857 (I'll have to look up the date again) through a legislative act Congress created the first taxpayer union, the NEA (National Education Association) thus beginning the slide downward. Reforms since by and large continue that decline. In 1930 phonics got kicked to the curb and we got Dick and Jane. By 1935 we had our first epidemic of dyslexia. By 1955 Rudolf Flesch wrote Why Johnny Can't Read.

I've subbed in the school districts in the last few years and took a look at the latest "how to teach reading" materials. It's like a mishmash of "look-say" and phonics, fragments of this and that. It's not hard to learn how to read, but it's made hard. When Isaiah surged ahead and did a week's worth of reading homework in one night he got reprimanded by the teacher (think To Kill a Mockingbird).

I asked a friend, long time teacher, "How did public education start?" She thought it had to do with the Industrial Revolution that it began as a babysitting facility where kids would be put to be safe. That topic wasn't covered in the teacher college she attended. I suspect many if not most teachers don't know the beginnings of this thing called "public education."

I bring this up because we have a fascinating 150 year history to look back on that makes it possible to make other decisions today.

The article below gives a direct scenario how the taxpayer who pays the unions is not allowed at the so-called bargaining table of these taxpayer unions.
http://www.ajc.com/opinion/neal-boortz-public-union-861337.html

I got to be on the receiving end this year of SEIU "union organizing".  What did they do to contact me to see if I wanted unionizing?  Nothing.  Then I got a ballot to fill out to vote, but I wasn't allowed  be at the vote counting. Did SEIU contact me to tell me the outcome of the vote? NO.  What contact did I have next from SEIU?  

If you guessed SEIU wanted more money from me, you would be right. 


FDR was right.