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I was recently at a party and spent considerable time talking to a couple who are recently retired Wisconsin public school teachers. They complained about their pay, their pensions, the lack of public respect for teachers, Scott Walker, and the rest of the usual litany of complaints.

Near the end of the party the wife went on a loud rant about poor pay for "highly educated" teachers and how she had been cheated by the system. So I asked her: "If teaching was such a bad deal and money was so important, why didn't you find a different career?" She then finally shut up.

Public school teachers in NJ are among the highest-paid in the nation; the Asbury Park Press released their salaries (as public information) a few years back and I’m sure it helped Christie get elected in a big way. These people work 180 days per year, 6 1/2 hours per day, and once tenured (after two or three years) they can’t collect unemployment because they are considered employed. None of the public school teachers I know have ever worked a summer job, and all of them have employment for life. They are draining taxpayers to pay for their ridiculously high salaries, scamming them with additional “degrees” from diploma mills to drive up their salaries (regardless of whether or not the degree is relevant), and American taxpayers (individual and corporate) are fleeing the state in droves to escape their clutches.

In NJ they have become a class unto themselves, intermarrying or doing so with other public servants (cops, firemen) equally removed from the realities confronting the people they bleed dry for their livelihoods. Oh, and they don’t teach anything either...

And that is the million dollar zing. Why did they become teachers in the first place? If it was to help children, the STFU and teach the children. If you wanted a steady job with no chance of being fired and no performace evals, than STFU and continue what you are doing.

The vast majority of teachers I have met - I do not care if this offends teachers or those related to teachers - are about as dumb as a bunch of rocks. Also extremely bossy and overbearing. They talk to people as if everyone is a child. And get extremely frustrated and upset if people do not follow their instructions, as they are so use to children having to follow their every command.

Thomas Sowell has a great book - Inside American Education - that I am now reading. Copyrighted in 1993, it is very scathing in the chapters about teachers, educators, and those seeking an education degree.