Who Is the Union, Actually?

One thing that I see that the public doesn’t understand-- and worst yet and more importantly, a lot of teachers don’t understand either-- is that the Teachers union is teachers. Most people want to separate the two as if there are teachers and then there are teachers unions. It’s especially prevalent on the political right, but like most things that are just known, what the political right knows as true is shouted from all of the rooftops of our stupid little algorithmic bubbles that are most definitely generated based on getting people as riled up as possible.

And it makes sense, teachers as a group are overwhelming popular. Sure, there are people who are very vocally anti-teacher, but for the most part, it’s fairly overwhelming popular. It’s in that public servant group that includes doctors, nurses, firefighters, and police officers (although, the last is maybe not the most in the group.) So if you’re anti-public education, you can’t necessarily attack the teachers. Instead, you need to create some kind of boogeyman that you can put all of the blame on. So, teachers =/= teachers union. But that can’t be farther from the case.

( I should probably use cuts, right? Read more )