How a Teachers’ Rally Made Me Anti-Education

I’ve always considered myself an ardent advocate for education. But a recent rally staged by teachers and students in favor of school funding forced me to reluctantly acknowledge an awful truth:

A few weeks ago (on Friday, May 13, to be precise) teachers up and down the state of California protested for more school funding. This mass multi-city “State of Emergency” protest was meant to be a Big Deal, a headline-grabbing statewide walkout, but you probably didn’t even hear about it at the time, since I suppose the media and the public have grown weary of endless political demonstrations.

But not to worry — blogs to the rescue! Fellow photojournalist Ringo of Ringo’s Pictures fully documented the Los Angeles protest, and I myself had camera duty at the San Francisco rally, the results of which you’ll see here (along with a selection of L.A. pictures).

You may be wondering: if these protests happened back in May, why are we only seeing the pictures now? Very, very good question.

These photos have been languishing on my hard drive for three weeks because every time I got the notion to blog about them, something stopped me. I’ve been making fun of protesters for over eight years now, but this time, I felt conflicted. I mean, c’mon, what have you got against poor teachers and young kids pleading for a few more pennies to keep their schools open? What are you, some kind of cruel anti-education knowledge-hating sadist?

I had some serious cogitatin’ to do. And each time I pushed this report to the back burner, unbidden thoughts kept percolating, simmering in the back of my mind. And it was not until today that I figured out why these otherwise unremarkable protests were so disturbing, and why I could only grumble under my breath at what ought to have been a legitimate social complaint.

(Photos and videos from both the S.F. and L.A. rallies are scattered generously throughout the following short essay. When you come to a photo, soak it in but then keep scrolling down — the essay continues all the way to the end! In each caption, “[SF]” indicates a photo by zombie of the San Francisco rally; “[LA]” indicates a photo by Ringo of the Los Angeles rally.)

^{An unapologetically political teacher leads students in march favoring tax increases. [LA]}

For most of my life I was what you might call an apathetic leftie — I didn’t particularly care about politics, but I always voted Democratic and if the conversation came up I would inevitably concur with my friends’ inevitably “progressive” opinions. And that most definitely included education. It was one of the few things I always had a strong opinion about: education was A Good Thing under all circumstances and maximizing everyone’s education level was ultimately the solution to all problems: unemployment, intolerance, ignorance, public health — everything.

In my youthful brain I couldn’t even conceptualize anything other than “public education,” so that’s what I imagined I was in favor of: Making public school, from pre-school up through graduate school, accessible to everyone and of the highest standards. I was like, Duh, how can you have any other opinion?

^{Elementary public school students learn radical chants from their teachers while posing for the cameras. [SF]}

But then 9/11 happened and like many once brain-dead liberals I awakened to a new reality. I didn’t particularly like this harsh new world, but I could see quite clearly that I had been drifting in a haze before, unaware of what was really going on. Mostly, as with most 9/11 Newborns, my new political awareness at first focused primarily on foreign policy and American Exceptionalism, but little by little, once this end was tugged, the fuzzy yarnball of my former political self unraveled entirely.

^{I can’t blame the adorable children; most of them probably only had the vaguest grasp what their adult-made signs even meant. [SF]}

But one belief never changed: Good education is necessary for a healthy society. This isn’t even a left/right issue: even conservatives will say that an educated America means an economically robust America means a strong America. And I still believe that.

^{Each one of the three signs depicted here merits a full analysis of its own; but I’ll simply let you the readers deconstruct the underhanded logical flaws in each message. [LA]}

But as I walked around the rally in San Francisco, and later scanned the pictures taken by Ringo at the L.A. rally, I found myself thinking uncharitable thoughts about the protesting teachers: I hope your funding gets cut even more! Your demands are futile because the state is bankrupt anyway and there’s no more money to give; but even if the economy were to eventually recover, I would still want to see funding for public education slashed to a minimum.

Horrors! I was taken aback by my own thoughts. How could I be so cruel? What evil right-wing influence was making me think this way?

And then I looked around me and realized: It isn’t the right-wingers who are making me think these awful thoughts: It’s the teachers themselves at this very rally who have forced me into it!

^{Teachers escort their classes from San Francisco’s public schools to the rally. The kids were obviously enjoying their first taste of progressive street politics. [SF]}

Last year I published a massive five-part essay about the miserable state of education in America (and no, I won’t even link to the thing, because it would take you a week just to read it and this essay is long enough all by itself). Part 3 of that essay was called “Indoctrination Nation” and discussed the extent to which public schools have ceased to be places for educating America’s youth but have instead become indoctrination centers where our children’s brains are marinated in political correctness and leftist thought patterns. But a few thousand words were not enough to do the topic justice; entire books have been written about the leftist takeover of education. Yet it’s even bigger than that. Political bias in education is by now its own field of study.

^{“REPUBLICANS ARE BUIIIES,” spells this Los Angeles-area school teacher. OK — but what the heck is a buiiie? [LA (or should I say "lA")]}

Even so, it’s hard to discuss the issue because the general adult public rarely gets a chance to actually perceive in person the kind of indoctrination that goes on daily in our classrooms. And without visual or experiential proof of the detractors’ claims, the indoctrinators always have plausible deniability: You wingnuts are hyperventilating over nothing! The only indoctrination going on is in your fevered dreams.

^{“Today, children, I want to teach you how to form your own opinions.” [LA]}

In fact, the left-leaning teachers’ unions often claim the opposite: that standardized testing forces them to teach rote learning as neutrally as possible, because school funding is now tied to each school’s overall test results.

And that’s what these May 13 rallies were all about: funding. Money money money, give us more money.

The very act of them asking for money is what made me not want to give them money, because it revealed their political bias.

^{The real agenda revealed. Ladies — you forget about the school part! [SF]}

• As you can see in the many photos illustrating this essay, their demands for more money were accompanied by many ancillary leftist slogans like “Tax the Rich!” and “Workers’ Power!” and “Cutting Education Is Class War” and so on. So this wasn’t just about requesting more funding for education: The content of the rally itself revealed that increasing school funding is just a component of a larger leftist agenda — school funding is being used as a lever to penalize the rich, increase power for unions, and so forth.

• The demand that unwilling taxpayers fund more government services is in and of itself a cornerstone of liberal ideology.

• The very act of having a street protest demanding handouts is essentially a leftist tactic, so the simple existence of teachers at the rally means that they embrace leftist ideology.

• As at other union rallies documented in earlier essays, socialist and communist groups mingled freely on May 13 with the teachers’ unions, their messages blending into a unified ethos.

• And the clincher: At both rallies, teachers brought entire classes of their students (this was held on a Friday, a school day, remember) to join in this overtly leftist behavior.

^{Many San Francisco teachers were apparently content letting their students carry signs from socialist and communist oganizations. [SF]}

It’s this last point that really turned me sour on the whole thing. Dudes, are you seriously bringing your students from public schools to a leftism-soaked political rally? You’re supposed to be their teachers, not their indoctrinators.

^{The “United Teachers of Los Angeles” union brought along plenty of students — and Che stickers. [LA]}

^{A close-up from the previous photo. Indoctrination? Where? Stop exaggerating! [LA]}

And indoctrination it most certainly is. Check out this video of kids having the time of their lives shouting teacher-led socialist slogans through school-issued megaphones, and try to tell me they weren’t having a memorable and fun bonding experience:

Until attending this rally, I was still a little conflicted about school funding. In the final installment of my five-part education essay mentioned earlier, I even wrote the following:

^{San Francisco parents: Did you know that when you dropped your kids off at school that day, their teachers would take them to participate in a lynch mob? [SF]}

But now, after seeing these rallies and pondering it some more — I’m not so sure. My suggestion goes off the rails in the first six words: “Break the monopoly of public education.” Oh really. How optimistic of you, zombie. And how exactly can that be achieved? As has become apparent over the last several years, the teachers’ unions and the progressive establishment have absolutely no intention whatsoever to release their grip on public education, not even one tiny bit, and they strive with all their might to crush any competition to the public school monopoly. They will continue to control the schools, and use them to indoctrinate children, unless that control is wrested forcibly from their hands.

Yet how can this wresting of control be achieved? The answer is right in front of us: The only way to break the stranglehold that leftists have on public schools is not to get rid of the leftists (which is impossible) but to get rid of the public schools. And how can we get rid of them? By making them so terrible that no parents in their right minds would allow their children to attend. And how can we accelerate the decline of public schools (beyond the atrocious decline already caused by the progressive masters)? By letting their funding dry up. Simple.

By now you may be thinking that I’ve gone completely insane. If we let public education collapse, then what will happen to the children of America, and by extension to our nation’s future? We can’t let public schools disappear without something to replace them.

No, I haven’t gone insane. (At least my secret friend Harvey the Rabbit tells me I haven’t.) I’m just voicing publicly what I think a majority of Americans are secretly thinking but unwilling to admit. And I’m placing my faith in Adam Smith’s Invisible Hand: that by creating a vacuum in the educational marketplace, new competitive solutions will organically emerge to take advantage of this unfilled need. The worse public schools get, the more parents will take their kids of out those schools and instead place them in charter schools, private schools, etc. etc., and the greater demand for non-mass-public schooling will ensure that educational entrepreneurs will rush in to capitalize on the demand, and create the best schools possible to attract and retain customers.

^{This is what they call “bad optics” in political strategy sessions. [LA]}

Will it mean chaos for a generation of students? An unstable and ever-shifting educational landscape? Maybe. And I wish that wasn’t so. But I see no other viable alternative.

Do I wish there was another, more palatable solution? Sure. But these leftist teachers like the ones you see on this page leave me no option: They’re not going to change their political stripes, and they’re not going to voluntarily relinquish control of our public schools or our children’s minds. So as I said at the beginning of this essay:

And after everything has collapsed and been rebuilt, maybe then we could re-create public education from scratch, free from politics and indoctrination. But until then I will have to reluctantly assume the role of the villain in the school funding debate. It’s for the children!

[Hungry for more pictures? keep scrolling down for the rest of the photos and captions. And to see dozens more photos from the Los Angeles rally, view Ringo's full report here.]

^{Students in one class were encouraged to draw pictures of themselves in radical poses. [SF]}

^{Did the parents fill out permission slips for this? And if they did, did they know what they were signing their kids up for? [SF]}

^{“Where are my teachers? Where are my counselors? WHERE IS MY PSYCHOLOGIST?????” [LA]}

^{Impeccable logic. I’m so glad schools now teach “critical thinking” to students these days. [SF]}

^{Richard Becker of ANSWER was handing out signs at the entrance to the rally. Except it was kind of a stormy day, and a strong gust came up, so… [SF]}

^{Give a kid a microphone and permission to say anti-authoritarian slogans, and you will never hear the end of him. [SF]}

^{We already have a word for “education needer”: it’s called “student.” Why the insistence on coming up with a manipulative euphemism for every freakin’ word in the language? [LA]}

^{Notice the advocacy for Lysenkoism at the end of the rant. Do these people not learn anything from history? [LA]}

^{Repealing Proposition 13 (the original taxpayers’ revolt) is the ultimate dream of California leftists. And if they got their wish (not likely) and it really was repealed, the state’s entire economy would completely collapse in about six months. But maybe that’s the point? [SF]}

^{Child? Check. Socialist sign? Check. Approving and/or unconcerned adults? Check. Yes, this must be San Francisco. [SF]}

Wintertime is right. I don’t give a crap how “conservative” some of these teachers are supposedly.

They KNOWINGLY allow this crap to go on to because, frankly, they are cowards.

Libs will lose it all for their evil agenda and any conservative that is afraid to take them on for the sake of an income is no better.

And you do the same...blame someone else. You sound like a typical jerk that calls into the local talk show that is discussing how bad the eduacation system is by yelling, “hey, I or my spouse are one of the good ones.” Big deal.

Bad doctors are never ran out of the business even though other doctos know who they are. Weiner won’t go anywhere if the Dems cover him too (but won’t). So if you can’t get behind SERIOUSLY getting rid of the bad teachers you have no business trying to point out the good ones.

Take on your administrations and get mad about the wasted money going to crap. And how dare you BRAG about working within the system when we all know it’s USELESS unless you DUMP THE UNIONS.

The simple fact you took offense proves the system is totally out on control for the simple fact you immediately started defending it as if those like you are some crusaders that will make it change.

Your results say otherwise.

"And you do the same...blame someone else. You sound like a typical jerk that calls into the local talk show that is discussing how bad the eduacation system is by yelling, “hey, I or my spouse are one of the good ones.” Big deal."

Have you ever actually held a position in the field of education? Do you truly have enough gravitas to take the position you so enthusiastically cling to?

"So if you can’t get behind SERIOUSLY getting rid of the bad teachers you have no business trying to point out the good ones."

Interesting logic. EVERY field has its "bad apples". According to your logic, ANYONE in ANY FIELD who attempts to identify those among them who are noteworthy "has no business" trying to do so. Apply that same logic to ANY FIELD if you are going to choose to argue that as a valid criticism of teachers.

"And how dare you BRAG about working within the system when we all know it’s USELESS unless you DUMP THE UNIONS."

Collective bargaining has been dumped here in Indiana, thank you. Next comment.

"The simple fact you took offense proves the system is totally out on control for the simple fact you immediately started defending it as if those like you are some crusaders that will make it change."

The simple fact that you attempt to apply universal logic to only the teaching profession is indicative of your inherent inability to rationally consider that this phenomenon exists in almost every other field of work imaginable. The word "teacher" is anathema to everything you consider good and proper in society, although corruption and malfeasance is rampant in most fields of work. Targeting ALL teachers as scum is very convenient and requires very little original thought. The bandwagon fallacy is hard at work here...

"Your results say otherwise."

You know NOTHING of my students' personal results for MY particular class! Please do not pretend to know how effective I am in my own classroom for you have not the evidence necessary to make such a claim. Collectively, I agree that the system is failing students. That said, be careful where you focus the blame. It is very convenient to simply blame teachers for all the world's faults.

Understood. I empathize with your position, winter, and wish that there were something more I could do to effect change in this broken system. I very much loathe those teachers who believe that somehow educators need more money to do their jobs as that is absolutely ridiculous. I am paid plenty for what I do and am content with what I make. Those teachers who share the Marxist ideology espoused in the pictures above are NOT my brothers and sisters, but are the enemy. I take no pride in knowing they tend to represent the ugliest face of education possible and bring antipathy from hard-working taxpayers down on ALL teachers' heads as a result.

Thank you for your response. I am as sick as anyone is about the failure of the education system. Mob rule has choked off the drive to excel for too many people, not only in education, but in other fields as well.

I “trash” any industry that protects and coddles the worst among themselves and especially those that do so with help of the law.

And you proved my initial point...seems everytime someone criticizes “teachers” for the crap that is constantly going on in our schools (the administrations are worse, again Unions) here come the defenses by “the good ones”. It’s usually their spouses that come to the denfense.

Our good buddy in Nashville, Phil Valentine, talks about this everytime he brings up bad teachers on his radio talk show. He reads one article or discusses bad teachers (he has a great story about when he moved to Philly and enrolled his kids in the schools) the phones are jammed with people like you.

See the problem? You prefer to defend yourself and attack me and never once brought an idea or solution on my point that the goods ones don’t/can’t or won’t push to weed them out.

The same applies to lawyers and doctors organizations. In my private sector job if you suck, you’re fired.

No wonder most students in my county are in private schools.

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