Union bashing is nothing new, but in the past decade, that union bashing has bled over into political, public, and media demonizing teachers through a nearly compulsive focus on themythological "bad" teacher.
This mantra of "bad" teacher, and the concurrent claim that we must immediately identify the best teachers, poses a significant contradiction in logic when paired with the anti-union message: If the teacher is the primary or even sole agent of student learning (the basis of the "bad" teacher mantra), then how are the working conditions of that teacher (the purview of teachers' unions) irrelevant to the teacher quality debate?
Walt Gardner has joined the union debate at his blog, opening with a provocative statement:
"Teachers unions have been called practically every bad name under the sun for so long that it seemed impossible to add to the list. At least that's what I thought until I
