I think public school teacher Peter Greene nailed the biggest public education win in 2014.
Greene writes on his blog:
In the midst of a staggering assault on public education, with their integrity, judgment, reputation, and ability under attack by everyone from corporate stooges to the US Secretary of Education, and, in many areas, with their job security under direct assault by people who don't know what the hell they're talking about, while powerful forces worked to dismantle the very institutions and ideals that they have devoted their lives to-- in the middle of all that, millions of teachers went to work and did their jobs.
Really, Arne Duncan (Secretary of Education)?
Green continues:
In environments ranging from openly hostile to merely unsupportive, teachers went into their classrooms and did their best to meet the needs of their students. Teachers helped millions of young human become smarter, wiser, more capable, more confident, and better educated. Millions of teachers went to school, met students where they were, and helped those students move forward, helped them grasp what it meant to be fully human, to be the most that they could be. Teachers helped millions of students learn to read and write and figure and draw and make music and play games and know history and understand science and a list of things so varied and rich that I have no room here for them all.
When so many groups were slandering us and our own political leaders were giving us a giant middle finger, we squared our shoulders and said, "Well, dammit, I've got a job to do, and if even if I've got to go in there and do it with my bare hands in a hailstorm, I'm going to do it." And we did.
Read the full piece at
Curmudgucation.
Teachers have become the "go to" punching bag of politicians and the media as corporate special interest groups from ALEC to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce to The Mackinac Center to The Heritage Foundation to The Hoover Institution have focused heavily on privatizing education.
Are you sure you just haven't found an easy way to a good living, Rush?
I don't know anyone living on Easy Street on a $35 K average public school teacher starting salary and all the teachers I know work their @sses off.
We know though what corporate media and right-wing politicians are going to say: privatize everything. It's the Democrats leading the privatization efforts who are so disappointing.
Yet even as they've had to take on other roles fighting lobbyists and corporate media:
Millions of teachers, caught in a storm not of their own making, under fire, under pressure, under the thumb of people with far more money and power still stood up and did their job. The powers that be tried to make us fail, and we got the job done anyway. Celebrate that.
Celebrate that indeed.
---
David Akadjian is the author of The Little Book of Revolution: A Distributive Strategy for Democracy.