Teachers are a special breed

I was thinking about teachers today. I was thinking about them because they are under attack. We all are, but I have a special affinity for teachers; they taught me many things. For the most part they were good to me, even those that whacked me with canes when I was a boy. That was the thing in those days; it was the norm. And we felt that if you got caught breaking the rules then you should be a man and take the punishment.

I don't agree with corporal punishment but I don't blame teachers.
Today it's difficult for them. Public school teachers work in some of the worst environments; the classroom I mean. They are blamed by the right wing nut jobs for everything that's wrong with education. They are expected to educate our children with anywhere from 25 to 40 in a class speaking five languages.

All the ills of society are brought in to the classroom. Kids from broken homes, stressed out parents, home where drug and alcohol abuse are rampant. And they have to do what they can in a society that has no respect for what they do and wouldn't fund it at all if they could get away with it; after all, the rich have the best schools money can buy. Government expenditure spent on the education of the children of workers and the middle class is simply money out.

On top of it all, when the cuts have to be made, when the class size goes up and the pay goes down, teachers are supposed to sacrifice with a smile. Their job is a vocation and they should willingly sacrifice for the kids in hard times. The funny thing is and a confirmation of the solidarity and collective consciousness that is very strong among working class people. teachares sacrifice a lot for their kids. They contribute too much unpaid time and money. Their deceny and dedication is used against them by the greedy bastards that run society. All productive Labor is honorable, but teachers, like many social workers, are a special breed.

Greed is good, the Wall Street Journal has been reminding its readers. yet when we go on strike for decent wages or better conditions we are greedy and greed is a bad quality.

The capitalist class think differently for their boys. They have been moaning daily in the pages of their press about the $500,000 a year cap on executive salaries introduced by the Obama administration as a means of quieting some of the rumblings from the populace about the rich. They are afraid that it might turn in to action and spill out on to the streets. Their boys won't take the job if they don't earn $20 million a year they say.

In California as all states they are attacking public services and worker's wages as well as jobs. It's time we put a stop to all this. Here is a flier we are using here in California that speaks to the cuts in education in particular and that we are using to hook up with people that agree with its contents and want to fight .