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First, are there examples of teachers in Catholic schools ever walking out on their kids, for ANY reason?

Second, I say to Mayor Emmanuel, give them their 30% raise. And then raise their taxes by an equivalent amount to help “pay” for other programs in the city. I have heard lots of arguing about needing to tax people to pay for important programs, and even at $70,000 (not a lot of money for Chicago) this makes these teachers “rich” by objective standards, certainly by the standards of the parents and students of the schools they teach in.

2 Responses to “Two Perhaps Overly Snarky Comments on the Chicago Teachers”

  1. According to Google, this year the Catholic teachers joined the national strike in Australia. Last year, 2011, Catholic teachers walked out in Philadelphia. But your point is made.

    Not only are Catholics more disciplined and obedient, but the concept of vocation (“calling”) says that you do not so much pick your career are you are called to your station. Free will rules, of course, but you go where you are called. That is your vocation. So, Catholic teachers would not niggling over a contract with an employer, but questioning in their hearts if they understand God’s will. It’s a whole other way of understanding the world and your place in it. Of course it is hard. Life is hard. Consider the suffering of Our Lord or the martyrdoms of the saints. Then, after you have contemplated those, get back to work.

    My own experience is from Cleveland for a look at Detroit, see For faith and Fortune: the Education of Catholic Immigrants in Detroit by JoEllen McNergney Vinyard, University of Illinois Press, 1998. Since the French in 1703, Detroit had been a Catholic town until the 1950s. The Irish who arrived in 1848 were the second wave. The oldest church and the oldest school were both Catholic. It is a reflection of the “Know Nothing” era that when Michigan became a state, they denied funding to the largest school system in the state, even though at that same time, Massachusetts was still collecting taxes for the Congregational Church. (Separation of church and state was entirely a federal issue and was not incorporated to the states.) Father Gabriel Richard is still considered one of the pioneers of “public” education in Michigan and Detroit.

    I went to public school. The post-war baby boom of the 1950s stressed all the resources, including classrooms. By the time I entered kindergarten in 1955, teachers were shuffling pupils to balance their loads, with extra subsets of 3rd, 2nd, or 1st graders graders in 4th, 3rd or 2nd grade rooms. With that and immigration from the South, by 1958, they were holding classes in the auditorium. Sixth graders were cut from art, music, gym, and serving in the safety patrol, so that my school could have four sixth grade classes where the had two. But the teachers did not strike.

    It would have been unprofessional. Strikes were needed by factory workers (perhaps), because of their relative lack of power caused by their absolute lack of education.

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