Yanking their pet demon, the UFT, out of their bayonet-lined hats is the pièce de résistance of the DOE’s traveling Black Magic Expo. Practicing their art, this posse of CSI sorcerers have lifted their own prints from every “crime scene” on the educational landscape and replaced them with the union label. But why?
Are they spooked by the union’s bold pursuit of partnership to achieve bona fide reforms? Are they miffed that the union stole its thunder by opposing social promotion? Are they in a unilateral feud with the union for its pleading for a workable student-teacher ratio and buildings that are safe from dangerous emissions and seepages? Are they burned up by teachers’ insistence on textbooks that, for example, reflect historical developments and geographical changes since 1955? Are they peeved by the union’s insistence on a serious discipline code to protect everyone?
What galls these illusionists?
Is it the rumblings of the union’s Dial-a-Teacher, which each day services many students with free homework help in 15 languages? Are they still fretting over the union’s successful efforts years ago to get parents access to school crime statistics? Do they chafe at the fortune in scholarships that the union awards every year to needy and deserving students? Is the UFT’s alliance with organizations that work for social and economic justice the bone that sticks in its throat?
What ails these creatures of vexation? Do they resent the union for its Cancer Help Line, its Victim Support Program, its encyclopedic range of its professional and ethnic committees and its task force on moral and social issues that often define themselves in political terms?
Is the DOE’s indignation due to our sounding the alarm against uncontrolled and wanton privatization? Maybe it’s the union’s professional development services (by far the best available) or its discounted mortgage counseling services or even its open-mic and members’ poetry readings!
Perhaps the DOE sees red because educators demand respect for their training, experience, and dedication and have the gall not to defer to imposters to education, regardless of their title and authority.
There is no silver bullet to pierce the mystery of anti-unionism.
