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I mean, are you "under constant fear of being fired" wherever you work? No one's advocating being seriously harsh to teachers; the issue is that currently, due

I mean, are you "under constant fear of being fired" wherever you work? No one's advocating being seriously harsh to teachers; the issue is that currently, due to union agreements and so forth, it's nearly impossible to fire them. We would fire a janitor who stops doing his job effectively; it's reasonable to apply the same standards to those we trust with our children.

jellicle 8y ago
>nearly impossible Your statement in very true in some locales, and not true at all in very many others. Teachers' unions are virtually nonexistent in the US South and Midwest, and only strong in the coastal blue states. If "strong unions" made teachers lazy/bad, then we'd see poor performance in the strong union states like New Jersey, New York and California, and great teaching performance in the weak union states like Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. That... is not what we see.
- AmericanChopper 8y ago
  That observation is only valid if you ignore all other factors that could differentiate those areas, which is obviously ridiculous. It also presumes that unionization is the only way to rid yourself of the fear of getting fired. Unionization will alleviate the fear of getting fired based upon factors relating to competence, but another way to do it is simply to increase your competence. I don’t fear getting fired at all, partly because I know I’m competent enough that it’s incredibly unlikely, and partly because I’m competent enough that I know I could simply get another job if I wanted to.
  - cannonedhamster 8y ago
    So is your competence judged by your customers, your peers, or random outcomes outside of your control? To put this in software terms. This is like a person in a support organization being provided buggy software and being fired on the number of bugs that get through. They have no control over the developers (parents) and students don't go through QA. Even if the developers were trying their best, if they are constantly distracted and pulled in multiple directions, what do you expect that the result of the software would be?
    - AmericanChopper 8y ago
      This is such a perverse view of what competence is, but I can understand where it comes from, since to support unions, you pretty much have to believe that competence doesn’t exist and that life is just a random series of outcomes. I know that I’m competent, because I have enough experience to understand the problems that exist in my field, as well as how to effectively solve them. There is no randomness or luck involved.
      - cannonedhamster 8y ago
        Life is entirely a series of random outcomes. You have no choice of who your parents are, you have no choice of what month you're born, what socioeconomic stratum you're born into, your inherent intellectual capacity, your genetic propensity, or your gender, and this is all just at birth. While hard work can certainly allow you to capitalize on opportunities that come along, you have almost zero ability to create opportunities yourself. My current economic status is exactly because I randomly received an offer and worked my butt off to achieve success. Someone I know who is just as competent as myself isn't nearly as successful simply because he hasn't had the same lucky break. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both worked hard, but both had random chance heavily weighed by who their parents were at birth which allowed them access to computing in a way that wasn't generally available.

jellicle 8y ago

>nearly impossible Your statement in very true in some locales, and not true at all in very many others. Teachers' unions are virtually nonexistent in the US South and Midwest, and only strong in the coastal blue states. If "strong unions" made teachers lazy/bad, then we'd see poor performance in the strong union states like New Jersey, New York and California, and great teaching performance in the weak union states like Georgia, Louisiana and Mississippi. That... is not what we see.

AmericanChopper 8y ago
That observation is only valid if you ignore all other factors that could differentiate those areas, which is obviously ridiculous. It also presumes that unionization is the only way to rid yourself of the fear of getting fired. Unionization will alleviate the fear of getting fired based upon factors relating to competence, but another way to do it is simply to increase your competence. I don’t fear getting fired at all, partly because I know I’m competent enough that it’s incredibly unlikely, and partly because I’m competent enough that I know I could simply get another job if I wanted to.
- cannonedhamster 8y ago
  So is your competence judged by your customers, your peers, or random outcomes outside of your control? To put this in software terms. This is like a person in a support organization being provided buggy software and being fired on the number of bugs that get through. They have no control over the developers (parents) and students don't go through QA. Even if the developers were trying their best, if they are constantly distracted and pulled in multiple directions, what do you expect that the result of the software would be?
  - AmericanChopper 8y ago
    This is such a perverse view of what competence is, but I can understand where it comes from, since to support unions, you pretty much have to believe that competence doesn’t exist and that life is just a random series of outcomes. I know that I’m competent, because I have enough experience to understand the problems that exist in my field, as well as how to effectively solve them. There is no randomness or luck involved.
    - cannonedhamster 8y ago
      Life is entirely a series of random outcomes. You have no choice of who your parents are, you have no choice of what month you're born, what socioeconomic stratum you're born into, your inherent intellectual capacity, your genetic propensity, or your gender, and this is all just at birth. While hard work can certainly allow you to capitalize on opportunities that come along, you have almost zero ability to create opportunities yourself. My current economic status is exactly because I randomly received an offer and worked my butt off to achieve success. Someone I know who is just as competent as myself isn't nearly as successful simply because he hasn't had the same lucky break. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs both worked hard, but both had random chance heavily weighed by who their parents were at birth which allowed them access to computing in a way that wasn't generally available.