Op-Ed: The Teachers and Their Unions Should be Charged With Educational Malpractice

DELRAY BEACH, FL – As a retired teacher with over 30 years in the classroom, I am both chagrined and embarrassed by the actions of my fellow teacher’s and their union executives. To listen to the union leadership you’d think that our education system is only setup for the benefit of the teachers, the students can go to hell, when it should be the other way around.

It is a fact that 95% of all political contributions by the teachers go to Democrats, therefore they hold a very large cudgel over the heads of the Democrat politicians by proclaiming to the politicians that they must “carry the water” for the teachers and their unions or you’ll lose their support. The teachers unions are the biggest financial and physical supporters of the Democrats, and they expect to be taken care of.

When the charge is made that the Teachers Union should be charged with “educational malpractice”, it relates to the actions by them over the years. It has been shown that our educational achievement levels by our students are lagging behind many countries of the world even though we spend more money per pupil than any other country. Something has got to be wrong with that?

Here are some examples of how the Teachers Unions have committed malpractice. Firstly, they are strong opponents of “school choice”, which has been found to be a realistic alternative to the government-run schools. Even former President Barack Obama backed the Teachers Unions in railing against “charter and voucher schools”. The union’s main reasons of being against the alternative schools is that most all the teacher’s in those schools are non-union, and they fear that funds to the alternatives will be taken from the public schools.  Secondly, the Teachers Unions have negotiated “sweetheart contracts” with many school districts whereby it is almost impossible to fire or get rid of non-performing teachers for cause. In fact, in New York City, they have “rubber rooms” in which teachers who were relieved of their teaching duties are “quarantined” (so to speak) in separate quarters out of regular classrooms, but are receiving their full pay as if they were actually teaching in a classroom. Some teachers have been in this program for years.

Just recently, during the Chinese pandemic, it was the Teachers Unions who were most vigorously against opening schools for “face to face” learning, claiming that the teachers were made vulnerable for contracting the virus even though young people were mostly free from contracting the virus or spreading the COVID-19 virus. The resulting isolation of the students from a regular “virtual” classroom setting has caused an increase in failure, and in many cases depression and mental problems sometimes leading to suicide. Most of the draconian shutdowns have occurred in Democrat-run states. States like Florida and Texas, have thrived by not putting into effect those ill-conceived shut downs.

And recently, the Teachers Unions have come out in favor of teaching the Marxist oriented “Critical Race Theory” in our schools, whereby the theme behind the theory is that the “white person” is the oppressor and that the “black person” (and other non-white minorities) are the oppressed. This far-left perspective is being introduced all over the country and is being endorsed by the Teachers Unions. Many parents are waking up to this assault on our education system and are speaking up at school board meetings by challenging the introduction of this Marxist oriented curriculum in our schools, reaching down even as far as kindergarten. As a result, quite a few states have passed laws banning this radical curriculum, and more are likely to follow.

So, as you can see, instead of working to make our education system a beacon of excellence, it seems the teachers are just being self-serving narcissists who are making our children subservient to the interests of the teachers and their unions. That’s enough to charge them with “Educational Malpractice”.