Prickly City by Scott Stantis for March 22, 2014

Stantis, you must have had an awful childhood. Get some therapy.

Based on a True Story.American Public Schools™ and the Teachers Union thereof, ladies and gentlemen.

Has anyone here watched the movie Waiting for Superman? It was made by the director of Gore’s An Inconvenient Truth. People who support these teacher unions, leftists, want to hurt minorities. They don’t care how many people drown in the system, just as long as the Left controls the system. It’s sad.

I never had a problem with any teachers except one bigot, and even the other teachers had a problem with that one. My only problems were always with administration – and the teachers felt the same way.

Exaggeration is funny. Stupid union-bashing is just stupid. Even tenure doesn’t protect actual incompetence. The fight against unions is just one more step to getting rid of well-paid senior staff in order to hire rookies at rookie salaries, and then you’ll see some incompetence, all right.

It’s official: this strip has jumped the shark.

I am a mathematician with 36 years teaching experience.. I work at a major research university and will occasionally teach a class for the local community college when they cannot find anyone in an emergency. I can assure you there are people teaching math at community colleges that are not qualified to teach math. They are typically retired public school teachers wanting to supplement there retirement incomes. So, regardless of your opinion of the union implications of the strip, do not doubt the point about some teachers with very questionable technical skill.

There am some union dummies on here.

So the message is that Paul Ryan learned his budget math from a union teacher?

When you bring so many egos to a boil, you know you’re doing something right. Thx Scott.

Granted I went to a parochial grammar school in the late ’50s to early ’60s, practically before language and math were invented, and granted the nuns had latitude not given today, when we went to high school we 1.could read at a level ready for the high school summer reading list; 2. were ready for freshman algebra; 3. could identify at the very least the continents and knew which one we were on; 4. needed neither remedial anything nor therapy for anything. And you want to talk about underfunded? We had split fourth / fifth grades, meaning there were approximately 60 kids in the room, half in 5th grade, half in 6th. The half not being actively taught did exercises in their workbooks or reading assignments. The nuns did not have a union. What they had was self-discipline, personal dedication and an education themselves, attributes many teachers today share. They, unfortunately in too many cases, do have unions and administrations composed of education theorists who would not send their own children to those schools. In the next installment I’ll tell you about the fifth grade public school teacher my son had who lambasted him on a paper about a grammatical error SHE made.

Hilarious! All black teachers are tenured, fat, and stupid. Well done. I’m going to cancel my subscription to the St. Louis post dispatch.

Really? You are equating unions with corporations? LOL! The federal government and regulations and the marketplace have taken over what unions were formed for. They are relics and do more harm than good. Example: USPS…government employee union…disaster. They are currently funding pensions for people that don’t work for the USPS YET! Detroit? ’Nuff said. California? ’Nuff said.

I don’t care if the president is ‘different’ from me. Most of the presidents are…they are men and have money. Neither of which I am or have. My problem with this president is he has ‘presided’ over a downgrade in our credit, more people on food stamps, welfare, unemployment than ever before. Women participating in the workforce is at it’s lowest level in decades. Actual unemployment is at it’s highest since the depression. Employment for black males is at 25%. Bush had world leaders to the Texas White House. Obama can’t be bothered to meet with other nation’s leaders unless he has the pomp of the WH backing him up. He can’t even be bothered to go to Camp David. It is not good enough. Michelle and the family are taking a vacation (again) on our dime (again). The Obamas are supposed to pay for her girls and mother on these trips. They don’t. The girls are listed as ‘staff’ so they don’t have to reimburse us. They have done this on the Africa trip, the Spain trip and many others. Oh yeah, the president is also different from me in that he is a socialist…I’m an American. A free market capitalist. I’ve even had jobs…had my first one at 16, after working for free for my dad since 12. This is his first job and he’s failing miserably. And if he is taking Crimea ‘seriously’…why was he taking a photo op to fill out his basketball brackets? That’s gives me confidence. Putin and the rest of the world are laughing at us…and 1/2 of America deserves it as they voted that incompetent community organizer into office. SMH.

Scott…hilarious cartoon. I love it.

So two wrongs make a right?

Sadly, good comic strips are only good and comical when they skewer the truth. Your drawings are therefore neither good nor comical as there is not a grain of truth in them. I challenge you to find one shred of truth to support anything in today’s strip about tenure and the ability it gives teachers to teach that 2+2=22, or for that matter any strip you have written about tenure since it doesn’t exist, anywhere, as you describe it. Likewise, your recent strip about warm bodies being required in public schools for the per seat payment for attendance. Ironically, that stance has been proven to be a tactic of private charter schools. Enroll them long enough to count them for the dollars but get rid of them before their test score might count against us.

Yeah, to hell with the teachers that dedicate their lives to work with children! Let’s give our tax dollars to some investors of a charter school. We should let some venture capitalists stick their hands in the greedy teachers’ pockets. Millionaires care about working class and poor kids way more than their teachers do. Scott Stanis, you are a tool!

Yes, heaven forbid teachers earn a decent living after devoting their lives to children. Better to destroy public education and farm it out to profiteers like Gates and Rhee. Or better yet, trade all those experienced teachers in for Teach For America newbies with five weeks of training who will leave as soon as they serve their stint. Oh, and by the way, tenure does nothing to protect a teacher who is not doing their job. I’ve got an idea Scott…why don’t you take over a city teacher’s job for a week? Then comment on how undeserving they are.

Your multiple errors in a simple sentence indicate you are another tragic victim of home schooling.