Posted on 05/30/2010 4:04:26 AM PDT by Scanian
Along with its usual claims that cuts will destroy schools, the Web site of the United Federation of Teachers marks the union's 50th anniversary by paying strange homage to a firebrand founder, Albert Shanker.
It does so by saying that, "In a movie, Woody Allen once described Albert Shanker as a mad bomber who destroys the world." The union apparently sees this lone sentence as high praise for its late boss.
The movie was "Sleeper," a 1973 hit where Allen, director and star, wakes 200 years in the future. Amid gags about dehumanizing machinery -- remember the Orgasmatron? -- Allen learns his old world was destroyed when "a man named Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear warhead."
The line drew laughs, but the Web reference suggests the union still doesn't get the joke. Shanker's militancy was the butt, not a point of pride.
But hold on. Perhaps we're wearing blinders. Maybe we fail to understand the union's scorched-earth policy on protecting its interests, even at the expense of New York students.
Its bitter resistance to charter schools, and attacks on philanthropists who help fund them, is a defining moment in union history.
(Excerpt) Read more at nypost.com ...
I once had a young female Communications teacher in high school who made me all wild and woody.
I remembered the Shanker bit from the movie but moreso I think of Diane Keaton singing the rebel anthem.
“Rebels are we, born to be free!
Just like the fish in the sea!”
Unions have lost their usefulness because they have been taken over by money greedy thugs.
Al Shanker was a great leader of the UFT but the President at the foundation in 1960 after a historic 1 day strike was Charlie Cogen.
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