Monday, September 19, 2011

Who is Zea?

I encountered a woman the other day wearing a "who is Zea?" T-shirt. So I asked. She turned around, showing the rest of the shirt. Zea is the Zion (Illinois) Education Association. The lady then volunteered that they wear the T-shirt every Friday at school and that it helps not having to think about what to wear that day.

Perhaps it is time for the Zion school district to consider a dress code for teachers. A teachers union is not an innocuous organization. Right or wrong, teachers unions engage in negotiations that, by definition, have two (or more) sides. As such, they can and do lead to contentious exchanges in a given locality.

Why should such an organization be allowed to not-so-subtly propagandize to a captive audience of school children?

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Not-so-subtle for sure. This crap is all around us. When RUSD teachers wear black arm bands in class to show solidarity, regardless of whether they are crying about their contract, greiving some perceived slight, or collectively having a bad hair day - "the children" are always the pawns.

Worse, the schools and central office are complicient by allowing union thugs to send propaganda letters home with the kids, usually right around the time of the latest referendum.

Denis Navratil said...

Perhaps, and sadly, a policy akin to that directed at the gangs should be implemented. I say sadly because true professionals would recognize that they should not be propagandizing to children and would therefor not have to be told what to wear or not to wear. Like the gangs, they need to be forced, apparently, to keep their activities out of the schools.

Anonymous said...

Is there any reason why the student dress code should not be identical to the teachers'?
"Because it is not in the contract."
Just one more issue that would be simply left up to the Administration - if the contract wasn't so quickly extended prior to Gov Walker's Freedom Act.

Anonymous said...

Denis, your contact email @aol.com doesn't work. I want to send you a jpeg of a teacher flying their union flag in the classroom, so to speak.

Denis Navratil said...

Sorry anon, not sure why it isn't working. Can you describe the scene?

Anonymous said...

Here's what I get:

Mail delivery failure
This message was created automatically by the mail system (ecelerity).

A message that you sent could not be delivered to one or more of its recipients. This is a permanent error. The following address(es) failed:

>>> freeracine@aol.com (after RCPT TO): 550 5.1.1 :
>>> Recipient address rejected: aol.com

Denis Navratil said...

I meant the scene in the classroom, sorry.

Anonymous said...

Oh, sorry. It was a union poster prominently displayed in the window of a school in New Glarus. The kind you'd see plastered all over the REA building. My guess is we won't have to look very hard to see they've spawned in our local schools as well.