Mitt Romney, fresh from slaughtering caged birds, has now turned his sights on his latest target: teachers. The Herald reports that – at an event honoring Martin Luther King Jr., no less – Romney said the following:
They will distort and deprive, they will torture and twist, but donât forget, to them, itâs first about compensation and jobs.
Way to go, Gov. Way to encourage civility in public discourse. Way to encourage respect for the teachers working in the toughest schools in Massachusetts. God, what a jerk.
Reportedly, Romney was loudly booed by his audience. Good.
By the way, this has nothing at all to do with whether you think Romney is right or wrong in arguing that the state ought to lift the cap on charter schools. It has everything to do with basic human decency – a commodity apparently in short supply in the corner office. Remember Rod Paige, the Bush Education Secretary who called the nation’s largest teachers’ union a “terrorist organization”? This move is right out of Paige’s playbook. Kinda weird – Paige was roundly condemned for his remark and had to apologize after issuing it. Why would Romney follow this pathetic lead?
UPDATE: As alert commenter Dr. Gonzo notes below, the Globe’s report on the MLK speech weirdly omits any mention of Romney’s inflammatory comments, though it mentions that he was booed. So to read the Globe article – entitled “Romney assails racial divide” – you’d think that Romney was booed for proposing bold new initiatives to close the racial achievement gap, when in fact he was booed for basically calling teachers a bunch of greedy bastards who hate kids. A very shoddy reporting job by the Globe.
yes, b/c all good teachers enter the job for the spectacular pay and great hours.
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Does Romney even know what a typical teacher’s day is like — much less the typical student’s day? He continues to ream one of the finest education systems in the nation and offer no improvements.
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slash-and-burn policy, does not good leadership make.
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tortured and twisted by the liberal effetists,
thank god this is still a “two-paper” town, the globe completely missed it.
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http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2006/01/17/romney_assails_racial_divide/
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something big-paper reporters are notorious for doing is half-assedly covering events like this and then doing after-the-fact reporting to put together a couple of inches of copy.
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how do you miss a quote like that??
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arrg,
Really weird. The Globe mentions that Romney was roundly booed – but since it doesn’t report his most inflammatory comments, one would think that he was booed just for touting “reform” proposals. Very misleading reporting.
Good for the Herald for getting the quote. This is not the first time Romney has levelled a cheap shot at the teachers union. It seems like yet another comment that plays well to the national conservative cognescenti but falls like a lead weight in the state where he’s actually the governor. It’s funny to me how Romney goes out of his way to peg the teacher’s union as a special interest group that cares more about its narrow interests than the broad public interest. He doesn’t seem to use those same glasses when he’s looking at, say, business groups.
but the fact is that teachers unions are “a special interest group that cares more about its narrow interests than the broad public interest”. Now, I’m not condoning Romney’s insensitive and hyperbolic remarks, just the sentiment behind them. Every dollar a teachers union forces out of our local cities and towns is a dollar less for education. Every unsustainable raise means bigger class sizes and a worse education.
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I have plenty of respect for some teachers, and very little respect for others. Some are good, some are bad, and the education I get is, I would say, mostly dependent on whether they are good or bad at their jobs. And the corrupt tenure system and the salary by seniority system means that good teachers who are new might earn half of what bad teachers who are old earn. Teachers should be judged and paid solely on merit and student achievement. If a principal wants to fire them, he should have the right to do so. If someone’s worked there for 30 years, but they’re a bad teacher, should they be allowed to be a bad teacher? I’d say no.
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The point is, teachers? Good. Teachers unions? Bad.
Stupid remarks like Romney’s don’t advance the debate. They inhibit it by making it really easy to say “Romney says teachers hate kids,” even if the ideas he’s advancing might actually have some merit. Words matter, and people need to start recognizing that.
It’s good to distinguish between teachers and teachers unions — especially professional union staff and union leadership. However, as much as I concede that teachers unions have disproportionate power and serve their narrow interests of raising teacher pay and providing teacher job security (even for bad teachers), I think “teachers unions = bad” is just as wrong rhetorically as the overplayed “it’s for the kids” that teachers unions use whenever they ask for a raise. The reason why Romney says it is because when it comes to campaign contributions, “teachers unions = Democrats.”
First off, Romney calling anyone greedy is utterly bizarre. The man’s made a career off of using daddy’s money to make even more money, typically harming the “little people” along the way.
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Second, Massachusetts teachers perform. The National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) tests are standardized tests used by the federal government to compare state education systems to one another. Last year, Massachusetts scored #1 in every NAEP test at all grades tested. This is an astounding achievement – does Romney somehow think that the superior genetics of his own children are somehow solely responsible for Massachusetts’ complete domination on these tests?
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Finally, what the $*@# is wrong with the Globe that they don’t call Romney on his vile garbage? The Globe needs to take a cue from its parent (The NY Times) and learn to go for the jugular when it comes to abusers of the truth.