Upside-Down Zarathustra

What is the sense in this?

"In the process, the superintendent threw out entire sections of a 37-year-old, 137-page agreement between the union and the district. The much-streamlined agreement now amounts to just 60 pages and, to make a long story short, the union wants its 77 pages worth of power back.

What places the union's power-grab into a fishbowl is the remarkable change that has occurred in the Phoenix Union High School District since Chopra's arrival. In less than five years, Chopra has wrought some astonishing improvements in student performance."

So the superintendent "threw out entire sections of a 37-year-old, 137-page agreement," yet in the next breath this is described as "the union's power-grab."

Sheesh.

Seems like it's Chopra who's grabbing the power, and the union just wants their say. After all, they do the actual work of educating.

The article goes on to genuflect before the amazing acheivements that Phoenix Union High School superintendent Raj Chopra has single-handedly made, despite the subversive attempts of the very classroom teachers who maintain the forefront of student education, contrary to the concerns of the teacher's union.

Unions are bad. Whenever people who actually do the work get together to participate in decisions that affect directly their area of expertise, they must be condemned. After all you do not want actual plumbers making decisions about the function of your toilet. You want bureaucrats to design your flushing system, no?

See what I mean?

No, I do not know the whole story here. My child does not attend these schools (they attend an adjacent system that is more highly appreciated by local real-estate people, homeowners, and renters.) But I sincerely doubt that draconian public efforts by just one person, who is not himself part of any classroom, are responsible for the acheivements of the Phoenix Union High School district.

The teachers in the classrooms with the students deserve ALL the credit. I believe they themselves improved their performance, if that is indeed the case, despite the superintendent. I applaud his decision to make lesson-plans applicable only after his approval. At least he cares that much. But how many successful lesson-plans has he himself written?

That's not his job, you say? I would agree.

Let the teachers do lesson plans without his interference, for they are the professionals best-educated to do just that. Instead Chopra should be down at the Arizona Legislature right now demanding about four times the money they allow him to work with, so he could hire teachers he really wanted and initiate programs that would take our students beyond the dismally low national ratings we now claim.

I do not think that's why he was given his present job. Truly, I believe he was given this position so he could herald the students of Arizona into the third-worldization of this state, as well as the middle-class of the United States in general.

Construction workers, taxi drivers, produce-managers, and the rest of the backbone of the Arizona economy need just to get out of high school as soon as possible, with as little education as is required to allow them to resist their lifelong economic exploitation at the hands of their elites, who themselves need little education to oversee their machines of greed.

Thus spoke Chopra.