I was able to attend the afternoon portion of the NCAEs action last week calling attention to how North Carolina appears to have abandoned its tradition of innovation and commitment to public education. While I appreciate that one part of what they were addressing was the need for increased teacher pay, I am not thrilled with the medias need to solely focus on that aspect of what the action was about. There was a lot more to it. I dont really understand how in a country that worships greed as a positive character trait we are so quick to judge the vast majority of people asking for living wages, salaries more in line with their skills/duties and equal pay for equal work as just being greedy jerks (seriously, make up yalls mind on this - greed is either good for everyone, or its good for no one). These teachers arent being greedy - a 2% pay raise when inexperienced staff in the Governors office got 8% pay raises seems reasonable - but I know thats what some will think when reading this coverage. During the afternoon, I heard about pay raises, but I also heard about better funding of the programs that support their students and their students parents. I heard about fully funding public education so it could be fixed. I heard that they werent interested in taking raises if it meant cutting budgets to other state programs - programs some of the teachers, their students and their students families depend on. I heard about the military industrial complex, efforts to crush workers unions, the school to prison pipeline and institutional racism. And I heard a lot about solidarity with other groups. So pay raises are one part of it, and thats important. But for those that really
Posted on: Tue, 20 May 2014 14:46:32 +0000
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