Vice President Joe Biden told the National Education Association’s 150th annual meeting today that teachers are under “full-blown assault” from Mitt Romney.
“Their plan for public education in America is to let the states use Title I dollars to boost enrollment in private schools,” Biden said, to the sound of booing NEA members.
“I’m not looking for boos, all right?” Biden said. “I think we should have just a straight, honest-to-God talk about the different between how President Obama and I view education and how our Republican colleagues today view it.”
The vice president went on to tell the teachers that Romney wants to “strip you of your voice because he doesn’t think that you all know much about how to educate; and he characterizes you, and his allies characterize you as not caring about the students, but caring about yourselves.”
“These guys,” Biden continued, don’t understand why teachers choose their careers.
“And by the way, like in politics, in business, in religious hierarchies, there’s really good teachers and there’s really lousy teachers. There’s really great teachers, and there’s some just plain good teachers,” he said.
“I’m afraid the governor and his allies — they don’t get it. They don’t get why you chose this profession. I’m not even sure — I won’t say that. They don’t get it. And look, folks, they either directly call you — and I’m not quoting Governor Romney now — but your critics either directly call you and imply that you’re selfish, that all this is about is an easy ride.”
Biden said that Republicans are making educators the “fall guy.”
“They should be thinking of ways to help you make your job easier, not more difficult,” he said. “Instead, they hector, they lecture and they blame you. And they call you selfish.”
Don’t know much about Romney’s plans but a conservatives view on more private education should be better for the teaching profession. More choices of schools and freedom from the DOE’s and NEA’s central planning offices.
it’s for the power and bennies, not actually teaching.
I speak as a “Professional Educator”. I have the slip of paper from the DofEd that says so…
Twin disasters have struck Education. The worst one is the National Education Association (aka Teachers’ Union)…generally run by phys ed and “studies” types.
Need I say more??
The lesser, but Still Evil are other professional Do-Good types. Here’s where Our Betters wipe their feet on the Hoi Polloi.
“A little learning is a dangerous thing/Drink deep, e’er ne’er approach the Pierian Spring.”
And Joe Biden does even come up to these low lifes…
– diagram your own sentence:
“I think we should have just a straight, honest-to-God talk about the different between how President Obama and I view education and how our Republican colleagues today view it.”
I was going to be all like, “If he went to public school, he probably can’t,” but then I looked it up . . . and he went to private school (it looks like at least one of his kids did, too). So, yeah. Putting aside the hypocrisy, I WOULD say this makes me re-think my commitment to send my future kids to private school, except that I live in an area where the teachers unions own everything, and I refuse to let someone with allegiance to a union instead of my kids teach them.
Joe Biden is not only obscenely stupid, but also has blundered through his life with a sense of entitlement.
No school, public or private, can fix that.
None of us want to see teachers put out of work. Instead, we want them working at small, neighborhood schools that are under the direct control of the parents, and we want them spending their time actually teaching real-life subject matter, not dividing their time between bureaucratic CYA paperwork and government-mandated indoctrination. Believe me, any decent teacher would be a lot happier.
You guys are missing the point. Biden needs to do something like this. The teacher’s unions, as a group, contribute enormous amounts of money to the Democrats, and work for them in other ways. One of the few positive things President Obama has done is in the area of teacher accountability. At least at the bully pulpit he’s been pretty good on the subject. A couple of years ago, when that school district in Rhode Island fired *all* their teachers, he was asked about it at a press conference, and he said “Good” in response.
So now he’s short of money. He risks the teachers essentially staying home, not contributing, not working for his reelection. I’m sure when he took the stance 3 years ago he wasn’t thinking he’d be in this sort of trouble (by now the economy’s sure to have turned around, right?), but now that he’s here and the fundraising isn’t where they want it to be, someone has to go kiss ass with the teachers, and get them back on board. Since they can’t point to their own accomplishments in areas that the teacher’s unions would like (killing off school choice and charter schools, shorter workdays, pay raises, better benefits, and the rest of it) the only thing he can realistically say is, implicitly, something like “You think we’ve been bad? Wait til the other guy gets into the White House, he’ll be incredibly worse! You’ll all have to show you’re good at your jobs, and actually work hard to collect your paychecks!”
What do you expect, reality?
One of the few positive things President Obama has done is in the area of teacher accountability. At least at the bully pulpit he’s been pretty good on the subject.
Don’t confuse a statement with action. It seems some liberals equate making a statement about something with actually doing something.
It’s true that Obama has made the odd statement now and then about teacher accountability. However, has he actually done anything about it? If he has, it’s news to me.