Teachers are one of America’s most valuable resources. Unfortunately, many believe this resource has been diluted with impurities and imperfections to such an extent that the profession is often derided as one for the least among us.
We all know this characterization is not true, and yet it persists.
Why? One clear answer is teacher unions.
There is no doubt these unions superficially benefit the teachers they purport to represent.
Collective bargaining has led to higher salaries, longer employment and better job security for these teachers.
So, it seems a non sequitur that teacher unions would actually be bad for teachers, but they are.
The teacher unions have taken political positions that have become increasingly unpopular with both the public and politicians in recent years.
While many pay lip service to the idea that teachers are good but teacher unions are bad, the two are incredibly difficult to separate.
After all, who are members of teacher unions?
Who pays dues to teacher unions? Who are the public faces of teacher unions?
At the end of the day, teachers are inseparable from teacher unions.
Thus, the backlash against unions also has been translated as a backlash against teachers.
This is why those unionized teachers who are more concerned with promoting their own union than with the welfare of their students should stand up to their unions and take back the educational system by again placing their focus on the best interests of their students. This undoubtedly will mean self-sacrifice by these teachers.
Instead of maintaining the government monopoly, these teachers must push for increased educational opportunities and school choice for their students.
By advocating this free-market approach to education and the abolition of arcane actions such as tenure, teachers will certainly face less job security in the short-term, but in the long-term they will again gain the public trust and elevate the educational standards of their students.
While less job security probably strikes fear in the heart of most teachers, it should not.
Open markets mean increased competition among teachers which, in turn, leads to the elimination of teachers who are not achieving adequate results, and thus, more openings for high-achieving, highly qualified teachers.
So, rather than marginalizing and ostracizing their colleagues who choose not to join them, radical unionized teachers should instead look to these colleagues as the future.
Instead of going along with the status quo, these non-unionized teachers have seen the handwriting on the wall and seek to restore the higher calling of their profession by putting the needs of their students ahead of their own short-sighted need to be insulated against the everyday ebb and flow of a market-based system of education.
Zack Smith is a first-year law student. His column appears on Mondays.
