Quote:
Originally Posted by MarchHare
Re: Mr. Coffee's post:
My younger sister is an elementary school teacher, and she'll confirm almost everything you said in your post. She's still young (about five years on the job) and enthusiastic. She's really passionate about developing the minds of her students, and she puts in tons of time outside of regular school hours prepping for classes, volunteering to supervise extra-curricular activities, and really going above and beyond. At the end of every school year, she creates a slideshow of photos she's taken of her class throughout the term and hosts an event where the parents of her students come to watch it. She's enrolled in an M.Ed. program because she wants to enhance her professional credentials and become better at her job.
On the other hand, some of her colleagues at her school (they tend to be older teachers who have been "ground down" by the system) just don't give a crap. They show up for 8:00, put in their seven hours, then go home at 3:00. They may have been passionate about their profession at one point, but those days are long gone. Now they're more interested in calculating how many years are left until their retirement than they are in shaping the future of their students. They never volunteer for any extra-curricular activities, and they do the absolute bare minimum amount of work required by their collective bargaining agreement.
They also earn nearly twice the salary my sister is making because they have union seniority.
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How is that in anyway unique to teachers or unions in general? I would bet eager young employees putting more into their job and being paid less than worn down senior employees counting down the minutes to retirement is happening in a majority of office buildings downtown right now.
To think that unions have a monopoly on unmotivated, lazy, not-giving-a-crap employees while private companies are able to purge such people at a moments notice is a pretty naive notion.