On Fox News, teachers unions ‘much more dangerous’ than al Qaeda

February 20, 2007

On Hannity and Colmes last night, right-wing radio host Neal Boortz claimed that teachers unions are “destroying a generation” and are “much more dangerous than al Qaeda.” In fact, Hannity gave him a chance to back away from the claim, but Boortz insisted he believes it.

BOORTZ: Look, Al Qaeda, they could bring in a nuke into this country and kill 100,000 people with a well-placed nuke somewhere. Ok. We would recover from that. It would be a terrible tragedy, but the teachers unions in this country can destroy a generation.

HANNITY: They are.

BOORTZ: Well, they are destroying a generation.

HANNITY: They are ruining our school system.

BOORTZ: They’re much more dangerous. We worry about al Qaeda and we should. But at the same time let’s not let the teachers union skate.

A few quick points in response. First, this effort to compare school teachers to terrorists seems like a fairly popular tactic for the right. You may recall, for example, that then-Education Secretary Roderick Paige called the National Education Association a “terrorist organization” in 2004. Calls for an apology were ignored.

Second, it’s also worth remembering that Boortz is not just some fringe nut, as evidenced by the fact that the president invited him to spend some time chatting in the Oval Office recently. (Intemperate liberal bloggers are to be avoided like the plague, but Bush hangs out with those who think school teachers are worse than terrorists.)

And third, for a group of people who claim to take terrorism seriously, they sure have lowered the bar on the terrorist threat.

In 2005, Pat Robertson said federal U.S. judges are a “greater threat to the fabric of America than terrorism.” In 2007, Boortz thinks teachers are “much more dangerous” than terrorists.

The right still believes terrorism is a serious threat, doesn’t it?

Post Script: If anyone knows of any other conservative “(fill in the blank) is worse than terrorism,” let me know. I’m working on a list. Thanks.

“then-Education Secretary Roderick Paige called the National Education Association a “terrorist organization” in 2004. Calls for an apology were ignored.”

name-calling is a common tactic used by those on both sides because it stirs up the emotions of supporters … the left has it’s share of mud-slingers

  • Teachers—public, private, parochial, and otherwise—should rise up as one and demand a formal retraction of this idiot’s comments by the White House—and if that retraction is not immediately forthcoming, then all teachers should unilaterally secede from all NCLB activities. Choke and die, Boortz—you filthy little protolithic animal….

  • Okay Boortz and Hannity there are two strike forces ready to come after you. One team is 6 members of Al Quadia. The other consists of 6 members of the teacher’s union. Which do you choose?

  • Only in the alternate universe that hard core GOPers live in, would teachers even be compared to al Qaeda much less compared negatively. I guess it is like the FBI memo where the agent said this:

    “While radical militant librarians kick us around, true terrorists benefit from Office of Intelligence Policy and Review’s failure to let us use the tools given to us”

  • Surely, a way over-the-top comment and unfortunately erases any credibility surrounding the criticism of the teachers’ union.

    That said, one should realize the teacher’s union represents protection of the best interests of the teachers’ and clearly not the student.

  • Good post CB. Once again you tell the truth and in comes an excuse maker for their evil behavior. Best way for teacher’s unions or any other group and their supporters to respond to such hate mongering as Boortz’ is to point out what they have done, in this case for labor and education, in spite of the actions of their attackers and let the truth be known that it is Boortz and his kind who really are terrorists to our well being and that their apologists are supporting terrorists.

  • Teacher’s Unions aren’t formed in opposition to kids, they’re formed to protect workers against the abuses of school districts and the government agencies. The interests of the children and the teacher’s usually coincide.

    When teacher’s want to protest working conditions short of a strike they do a think called “working to rule.” That means that the way they punish the school district is to do strictly what they are actually paid to do. Because schools function on the unpaid extra work of teachers.

    I’m also wondering if twits like Boortz and Hannity were “destroyed” by the teacher’s union?

  • Dale writes:
    “Okay Boortz and Hannity there are two strike forces ready to come after you. One team is 6 members of Al Quadia. The other consists of 6 members of the teacher’s union. Which do you choose?”

    To steal a phrase from an old Soviet Army joke regarding taking on an American unit or a German unit first.

    The Al Qaeda strike team because it is always business before pleasure…

  • The right still believes terrorism is a serious threat, doesn’t it?

    We’re Enemy #1. We always have been. The “war on terrorism” is just a means to a domestic end.

  • To cast (re#1):
    I have referred to the Chickenhawk right-wingers as cowards. Does this equate me with the RW Noise Machine?

    It has been stated that the facts have a liberal bias….

  • Shammity obviously can’t talk about how the Bush administration is treating veterans at Walter Reed worse than how Al Q. in Iraq treated kidnapped GIs.

  • I’ll give them a week before they start escalating and call public schools madrassas.

    I’ve worked with plenty of school teachers and one consistent theme has come up every time I’ve spoken with them about what’s going on in schools. Education has become all about process and not so much on content. And the issue of process is forced from the top down. Teachers have less latitude in what they teach simply because so much is imposed from outside authorities.

    The teacher’s union is the best way to run interference between every “genius” who has a better way to run the schools and the teachers who are just trying to get the kids to learn. Quit kicking teachers. It’s a hard job with poor pay and not always good working conditions and programs like No Child Left Behind have probably forced more good teachers to quit their profession than have brought substandard teachers up in terms of competence.

    The Fighting Right hates everybody. And the only reason they may not hate you is because they haven’t gotten around to it yet.

  • Interesting how the anti-labor bias works. Teachers and their unions are convenient targets. How much do you hear on Fox, the Bush Admin, elsewhere and even in the general public about: doctor’s unions (AMA) destroying medicine, lawyer unions (ABA) destroying justice, business unions (chambers of commerce) destroying the economy, etc.? And how they support only their best interests and not patients, clients, customers, citizens, etc.?

  • Neil Bores is the future of the neocon movement. As their relevance, impact and audience shrinks they’ll continue to slap a “terrorist” label on anything that displeases them because it is the only way they can get attention.

  • “I’ll give them a week before they start escalating and call public schools madrassas” comment by petorado #13

    The right has used the term “liberal halls of indoctrination” for a long time. I think the right-wing just hates the whole educational system.

  • Up here in Cannuckistan, they are as a whole fairly well paid with generous benefits and a powerful pension plan (a major reason why a lot of folks up here resent teachers.)

    I don’t understand why these guys are beating up American public school teachers. Kicking these folks is like beating up crippled folks. What real clout do they have? Not much.

  • Okay Boortz and Hannity there are two strike forces ready to come after you. One team is 6 members of Al Quadia. The other consists of 6 members of the teacher’s union. Which do you choose?

    The point of Boortz’s comment, such as it is, is that the scale of the teacher’s unions is larger than that of “Al Quadia”. So 6 vs. 6 isn’t a fair comparison.

    Anyway, to address CB’s listmaking, I don’t remember the details but didn’t a Daily Show interviewer get someone to assert that gays in the military was worse than terrorism?

  • name-calling is a common tactic used by those on both sides because it stirs up the emotions of supporters … the left has it’s share of mud-slingers

    Interesting premise…perhaps you’d care to name an equivalent mud-slinger on the left?

  • JRS Jr,

    That said, one should realize the teacher’s union represents protection of the best interests of the teachers’ and clearly not the student.

    Why should we realize a falsehood? Care to elaborate on this with some actual facts and not just assertions? Even spend much time in a school as an adult? Know much about the role the district and the administration (not to mention the state) plays in the classroom? Teachers are about the last profession we as a society should be attacking.

  • Is this a surprise? Of course the right is afraid of knowledge and it’s vessels.

    Terrorist? That’s just another word for donor.

  • I hate to say this–and even more, I hate to agree with the trolls–but teachers’ unions should not be beyond criticism by any means.

    I know with absolute certainty that most teachers, probably approaching all teachers, care deeply about their students and believe in the vital work that they do. The unions, however, consistently put its members’ interests ahead of the students or the schools. It often seems like their top priority is to ensure the job security of lousy teachers, and the ease and convenience of good ones; and the unintended consequences are a less professional, worse-compensated teacher workforce than could or should be the case.

    The result, at least in places like New York City, is a system in which officials are blocked from offering more money to teachers in high-need fields beset by chronic shortages (e.g. math, science, special education) or to entice the best educators to work at the worst schools. Instead, those schools consistently get the least prepared teachers (half of whom quit within their first three years).

    Obviously, I differ from jackasses like Boortz in that I want to preserve and strengthen unions. But I also don’t want to see them impede progress. Teachers’ unions should accept a tradeoff of much more robust compensation for outstanding experienced teachers in high-need public schools–up to $200,000 a year–in exchange for agreeing to more rigorous accountability.

  • Sure, Edo:

    The mission of the American Federation of Teachers, AFL-CIO, is to improve the lives of our members and their families, to give voice to their legitimate professional, economic and social aspirations, to strengthen the institutions in which we work, to improve the quality of the services we provide, to bring together all members to assist and support one another and to promote democracy, human rights and freedom in our union, in our nation and throughout the world.

    I don’t see the word “student” mentioned once in the mission statement, do you??

  • If there were any actual Christians in the world I think I’d put them way ahead of any other terrorists since their first targets would be organized religion.

  • to strengthen the institutions in which we work, to improve the quality of the services we provide

    Doesn’t this mean to make better schools and teach better? How is that not about the students. It’s always semantics with JRS Jr.

    I simply don’t understand how having well paid teachers who do not need to fear the loss of their jobs to truth impaired ideologues is anti-student.

  • I’m 100% with dajafi. My sister is a kindergarten teacher at a public school, and she points out that the Union is all about ubiquitous treatment among teachers, no matter how bad they may be and blocking salary awards based on performance. Salary increases are only by teachers education levels and tenure.

    Now, how the hell is that about “making better schools and teaching better”, Doubtful???

  • dajafi,

    …but teachers’ unions should not be beyond criticism by any means

    Did I imply they were “beyond criticism”? if so, let me be clear, teacher s’ unions are not perfect. But let me also be clear that I do not believe them to be the main problem affecting our public school system. Clearly people like Boortz, Hannity, JRS Jr, et.al. believe they are the main problem.

    JRS Jr,

    …the Union is all about ubiquitous treatment among teachers, no matter how bad they may be…

    This is just plain false, or at the very least incredibly misleading. Next I expect you’ll state that “Teachers’ Unions won’t ever allow the termination of a demonstrably incompetent teacher–teachers can *never* get fired”. This is untrue. Do Teachers’ Unions make it hard to fire teachers? Yes. Do they exist to ensure that teachers are treated fairly? Again, yes.

    question for you: how would you pay for “salary awards based on performance”? Where would the money come from? Are firemen and policeman compensated in similar ways? how about soldiers? to my knowledge the answer is not really. Yes, soldiers not in theatre don’t get combat awards, but teachers in different school districts aren’t paid the same, that doesn’t work.. Yes, corporals get paid more than privates, but isn’t that the equivalent of more tenured teachers getting paid more than new teachers? I say yes.

  • Now, how the hell is that about “making better schools and teaching better”, Doubtful??? -JRS Jr

    See, there you go playing semantics games again. My comment was about the mission statement you posted and your misinterpretation of it, not about the execution of that mission.

    If, as your profound and insurmountable anecdotal evidence suggests, the Union may be failing to execute it’s mission, but that doesn’t mean the mission is flawed or that the union should be abolished.

  • “… ubiquitous treatment among teachers, no matter how bad they may be….”

    Most trade unions have a probationary period within which incompetents are culled. They also have mechanisms for removing members who engage in unethical or incompetent behavior.

    When we had our kitchen remodeled the contractor started out with non-union carpenters. The work went so slowly (the contractor should have stayed with cabinet-making, at which he was very good, and not gone into business, at which he was very bad). Finally the guy who recommended the contractor “sprung” two union carpenters from his millworks to finish the job. They arrived and left on time, took fifteen minutes coffee breaks, cleaned up as they went along, and did outstanding quality work in no time at all. I think people who complain about unions literally don’t know what they’re talking about.

  • JRS Jr,

    That said, one should realize the teacher’s union represents protection of the best interests of the teachers’ and clearly not the student. Emphasis mine.

    The implication is that your statement above is in support of Boortz’ comment “It would be a terrible tragedy, but the teachers unions in this country can destroy a generation.”

    If this was not what you meant to imply, then why did you make the statement? Better yet, how about a clear answer to this question: do you think teachers’ unions are a main source of problems with the public education system in the USA?

    Simple yes or no would suffice. I’ll even go first: No, teachers’ unions are not a main source of the problem with the public education system in the USA.

  • Ed Stephen,

    Most trade unions have a probationary period within which incompetents are culled. They also have mechanisms for removing members who engage in unethical or incompetent behavior.

    Absolutely correct and this is the case with teachers’ unions.

  • question for you: how would you pay for “salary awards based on performance”? Where would the money come from?

    These are vitally important questions and deserve a more balanced airing than in the context of a flame war, even a relatively mild one like this.

    Paying for it is actually the easy part, at least in theory: I honestly believe that people are willing to pay higher taxes for demonstrably better schools, and there’s probably a way to redirect resources from thriving companies into the schools (after all, even the most hard-hearted business leaders generally will grant that educated and skilled employees are vital to their firms’ success).

    Determining a formula for “teacher performance” is much trickier, but entirely worth doing. Something that gauges the progress in educational attainment over the course of a school year or division of same, normalizing for students’ level of skill and attainment at the beginning of the year and local and national averages, plus a qualitative component in which teachers are anonymously peer-reviewed and evaluated by administrators and outside experts.

    Would it be perfect? No, but this is art as much as science. And the goal–to professionalize the teacher workforce to the level of, say, lawyers, drawing the same quality of talent into a field with much greater societywide ramifications–is too important to keep going as we are.

    To the extent that teachers’ unions oppose efforts to raise overall quality and reward excelence in the field, they are something of a barrier. I wish they would focus more on systemwide improvements–fully funding federal education programs, for instance, and adjusting NCLB so it does more than force teachers to tailor their curricula to an intrinsically meaningless standardized testing regime–and less on the job security of their most laggardly members.

  • Edo is right.

    Teachers in this state anyways can be dismissed without showing any cause — they are employees-at-will — during their first two years in a school system.

    They have no protection whatosoever against arbitrary dismissal.

    Which is why they don’t flunk varsity athletes, children of board members, or friends of board members, children of people who work on the local paper, or friends of people who work on the local paper….

  • Of course most people who actually know about what goes on in schools, and not just propaganda put out by those who don’t know or don’t care, realize that most instances of attempts to terminate teachers involves problems in just trying to do their jobs or being involved in conflicts with the management or their friends (see #32), not incompetence. The incompetence angle is just more of the drum beating marginalizing and demonizing of teachers and unions. Unions aren’t perfect but neither are management and ownership. The attacks are part of the larger anti-labor and anti-human framing in an “ownership” society.

  • Boortz started here in Atlanta and is still here, doing his syndicated talk-show. He’s blasted teachers unions for years, but in the past, when he was attacking local teachers organizations that he called “unions,” he never mentioned that a union is free to use collective bargaining. As far as I know, there are no real teachers unions in the South, which may say something on the matter.

    My wife is a teacher, my mom was a teacher, and my best friend is a teacher. But I have to say that, from my observation, teachers tend to bitch and moan privately, but act like sheep in the face of critics. Here, anyway, there’s no threat at all from teachers unions or anything like them.

    At some point soon, however, people will stop blaming everything on teachers. There won’t be any.

  • dajafi,

    And the goal–to professionalize the teacher workforce to the level of, say, lawyers, drawing the same quality of talent into a field with much greater societywide ramifications–is too important to keep going as we are.

    two points: 1) pay teachers as much as 1st year associates at big law firms and you’ll see lots and lots of competition for those jobs, 2) are you aware that associates at law firms at the same tenure make the same amount of money? They do.

    finally, you state that finding the funding would be easy. I beg to differ. Companies routinely complain about the quality of high school graduates but they also complain about taxes. If they were so interested in improving the quality of K-12 education what’s stopping them from giving money, equipment and/or supplies to schools and providing their own bonuses directly to teachers who do a great job? Nothing. Every teacher I know (and trust me its quite a few) pays for supplies for their classroom out of their own pocket.

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