Let’s Hear it for the Teachers
By Michael Boyajian
I remember back when I was a Republican sitting at political dinners with one GOP speaker after another getting up to bad mouth our teachers and thinking to myself what are they talking about I have never had a bad teacher from K through 12 in New York City and Long Island through Buffalo State College, Stony Brook University and Brooklyn Law School. All were true professionals.
Too often politicians like to “chum for votes” by bashing scapegoats like blacks, gays, Muslims and yes teachers the people who helped make this country what it is today, that made it possible to overcome the Great Depression, win World War II, land a man on the moon and end the Cold War.
Yes there are ignorant people out there who take out their educational deficiencies on our teachers and love it when a politician knocks one. But I know teachers who teach in our affluent suburbs, our inner cities, our public schools and our private ones, in state and out of state and they all do their very best to educate students. They are consummate professionals and deserve our upmost respect as such.
To demean them is just a childish exercise by an immature adult who is still filled with teenage angst who takes the Alice Cooper song Schools Out to heart as an anthem of the ignorant rather than just a fun song played often at the end of the school year.
And if you look real hard at those politicians who treat our teachers unfairly you will find they are usually drop outs or people who didn’t do well in school because they were spending too much time around the keg. Why blame yourself when you can blame someone else?
So let’s hear it for our teachers. They are just as much heroes as are our firemen, police and first responders.
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