Tuesday, August 23, 2011

picketing kindergartners ... and other ways to obscure your own message

How you do something matters every bit as much as what you do. It’s true in every normal and ordinary facet of human existence. It’s true in politics too. Nothing illustrates that more than the act of picketing in front of an elementary school during kindergarten orientation. I believe that teachers are largely underpaid and underappreciated. I have always thought that unions, while far from perfect, play an important role in protecting American workers and winning them rights that they would not have received through the unfettered operation of the free market. I think that teachers and their unions have every right to fight for what they believe they deserve in terms of salaries and benefits. I am fully aware that teachers and their unions are especially under attack in the era of the tea party. All that being said … I am also a father who wanted his daughter to have as smooth and non-threatening an experience as possible at her kindergarten orientation. Kindergarten is a big milestone, and as it has grown closer everyone in my family, with the possible exception of my two year old son, has grown more nervous. We all went into this orientation needing reassurance of some kind. None of us went into it needing a picket line. I’m not going to change my opinion of this labor impasse, or teachers or unions more generally, because there was a picket line outside of the kindergarten orientation. That being said, my grandparents were autoworkers in Flint. My mother was a teacher, as were my in laws. I could have the teacher’s picket in front of my garage while I tried to teach my daughter how to ride a bike and not be turned away from their cause. Everyone isn’t like me. Everyone wasn’t born in Flint. But everyone at Albert Schweitzer yesterday morning was a parent. The leaders of the teacher’s union ought to know that. They ought to know what kindergarten orientation is like for parents … what it ought to be like. They ought to know that actions like this only obscure their message … they only play well to their hard core supporters, if at all. Their message is important, but getting people to really hear it is important too. Picketing kindergartners isn’t the best way to do that.

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