Disgracing their profession, the Mass Teachers Association is on record as favoring the fantastic jobs that they think will be come gushing forth from predatory gambling and casinos in Massachusetts. The blogger Gladys Kravitz deals with the abandonment of their professional principles brilliantly and humorously here.
I know that many, many teachers object to their union’s position; they should call on their executive board (where it was a close vote) to reconsider the question.
The idea that the MTA, which purports to represent the hard-working adults who dedicate their lives to kids, favors the promotion of addiction in order to create dead-end jobs is deeply disturbing.
Please share widely!
Agreed. The MTA has been taking some very short-sighted decisions lately, regarding issues and candidates. This is another group that’s a little too chummy with the people in power…
What if we put the slot machines in the schools? We could skip the inefficient tax thing and just have the slots empty directly into the schools coffers.
I thank the powers that be that I was not eating or drinking anything when I read this comment. Priceless.
It’s called the lottery.
Is a brillant blogger.
Is this possible? For being at work 180 days out of a year?
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p>Wow, you don’t know how the teaching profession works, do you? For the record, the face time teachers have with the kids is not the whole job. Perhaps you should actually talk to some teachers before posting comments that make you look naive and ignorant.
I will say that some are fantastic. But I will also say that some are so awful it is detrimental to our children to keep those teachers on staff. However, unless they break a law or some such thing, they can continue to ruin children’s future as long as they see fit.
with the the K-12 school system? How many parent/teacher meetings have you had? What do you think about the homework that comes home with the students these days?
Do you ever feel like you are homeschooling at night what the teacher didn’t teach during the day? Are all of the teachers you’ve had to interact with displayed excellence and enthusiasm in teaching the children of your community?
MCRD has been around here for a while, long enough to make clear that his ideas about education exist independently of reality. Crunch the numbers and you see that teachers make in the neighborhood of $20/hour. The mistake is a good amount of people think just because they leave work at work, teachers do too.
But certainly you’d agree some teachers hit the door when the final bell rings.
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p>I’m involved with a Dorchester school where some 75k+ teachers (accurately, so far as I can tell) describe their own day as being 7 hours.
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p>Even assuming they don’t take any of the up to 20 sick/personal days they’re entitled to, that’s more like $60 per hour.
Same teachers slack off and are burnt out…just like some cops, firefighters, prison guards, and any other field of public or private service. Yet the same folks are targeted every time by lazy stone-throwers.
which I figured out to be $45/hr with 190 day/yr schedule and an 8 hour day. They are in class for 6 hrs per day, and supposedly do a lot of at home work. However, when you try to schedule an appointment to see a teacher, they are only available from 10:15 to 10:45 one day per week and they are booked for the next 4 weeks. Try to get an appointment after school with them, well, you are just out of luck because they cannot stay after to meet with you.
Some are conscientious, and will respond to emails with useful information that you have requested. Others will ask you to email them to remind them to email you.
I have a long 6 years ahead of me.
Teaching’s not a bad gig. In Massachusetts, teachers may be overpaid, but not by much, if any. I’m sure there’s isolated or anecdotal cases.
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p>However, I’d find it hard to believe a tenured teacher can believeably complain about being underpaid.
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p>Macroeconomically speaking, the contracts are out of control with the automatic steps and such and it’s a bitch for State and local when tax revenue are down. Add to the mix the fevered education nazis who want the taj mahal for their kids paid for by others and Education is quick becoming a budget buster.
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p>But, from the teacher’s perspective, if you like to teach it’s 1) a secure job with 2) great vacation time 3) at decent pay. And so what if you take work home. Lots of people take work home. I teach various courses part-time, get good reviews at it, enjoy it, and it’s easy and decent money.
I can understand your point of view about gambling. I understand many people are against gambling because they feel it exploits addiction.
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p>I am a bit bothered by collateral argument that says working in a hotel, or a restaurant, or a resort is not a real job, that the people who make beds, or serve food, or cook, should be mocked or demeaned, as if their jobs are not real or important, and as if they are not worthy of respect.
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p>Do you believe that someone who makes beds and cleans rooms in a hotel would be better off on welfare or homeless?
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p>As long as people travel for business or pleasure, there will be a demand for these jobs. I don’t view the people who perform this work as deserving of contempt.
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p>I understand that you don’t believe the creation of resort hotel jobs justifies the social harm done by promoting gambling. Fair enough. Leave it at that.
pay for their college education. Those deadend jobs will pay the rent for people who did not get an education. Those dead end jobs will help retirees supplement social security.
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p>So what are we going to do when there are no longer waitresses and hotel housekeepers and customer service associates and all of those other worthless positions that everyone of us relies on fairly regularly.
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p>Who will provide services to the lawyers, teachers, politicians, doctors, CEO’s etc etc.
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p>Maybe instead of trashing the service providers (which by the way, are where the majority of jobs are in the US)and demeaning what they do, we should fight harder for a living wage for them. They deserve it don’t you think. How many people went out to eat this week? How many people shopped at a grocery store and allowed yourself to be cashed out by a person in a deadend job.
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p>I’m not defending the MTA here, I am defending middle America. And I will not defend the teachers of America either. I’ve had to battle with them regularly to get them to do their jobs. Maybe they should worry more about those kids that keeping dropping out of school then whether or not a casino is coming to town.
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Leaving aside the question of whether casinos wd be good or bad for the state, there’s an important principle of solidarity at stake when unions support each other’s positions. If the construction unions want casinos, I think that shd have weighed very heavily for the MTA’s decision.
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p>Also, I agree with the sentiment expressed above that objects to the mockery aimed at service jobs. This ad reflects the snobby assumption (too common in our education discourse) that holds any outcome short of a four-year lib-arts college to be a failure.
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p>The way to make hotel jobs better is to support hotel worker unions and to force casinos to accept organized workers, not to imply that every hotel worker was a potential white-collar button-pusher whose parents and teachers failed them.
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p>Most progressives I know don’t understand or accept, at the level of principle, how labor power works.
Labor (most teacher’s don’t identify themselves as part of the labor movement, they are professionals) does not seem to acknowledge the larger Democratic issues of environmental impact (24/7 night lighting, expansive infrastructure, water, sewer, rubbish, gas emissions/air quality), the negative social impacts of addictive gambling (domestic violence, bankruptcy, child neglect) and the destruction of small/local businesses inherent with casinos/slots.
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p>Solidarity seems to only encompass the bottom line = $$$.
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p>One would think that labor would be extremely skeptical of the very industry model (uber-capitalism) that has undermined labor and corrupted the American and global economies.
to watch all you “friendly liberals” hard at work stuffing strawmen, and mocking the people who provided approximately 90% of the funding for the recent Question 1 campaign. Oh, by the way, you’re welcome.
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p>I was blissfully unaware of our “professional principles” until they were defined for me by you all! And I am just thrilled to read of the tenor of discussion at the Executive Committee of the MTA portrayed by people who were not there. Thanks for clarifying for me that the talk of the dignity of work is merely verbiage to the elitists posting here so humorously.
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p>Seriously, folks, what are you gaining by this kind of attack on one of the bastions of progressive thought…and one that actually funds your efforts? And please don’t try to downplay what this blog item actually is. When the next cockamamie idea spews forth from the Carla Howell ideological loins, will this little bit of “fun” on your part assist in efforts to form coalitions? You can insist on ideological purity, I suppose; but how has that effort served (for example) the Republicans?
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p>Nah…this was all in good fun….right?