from the outside

[People Looking at Political Posters on Street, Paris]

Rudy Burckhardt  (American (born Switzerland), Basel 1914–1999 Searsmont, Maine)

Date: 1934

Medium: Gelatin silver print

Dimensions: Image: 16 x 23.7 cm (6 5/16 x 9 5/16 in.) 18.9 x 24.9 cm (7 7/16 x 9 13/16 in.) Classification: Photographs

Credit Line: Twentieth-Century Photography Fund, 2009

Accession Number: 2009.278 Rights and Reproduction:

© 2011 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York

courtesy of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York

17 highly personal reasons that I’m conflicted about the teacher’s strike...

1. teachers must be highly compensated when they do good work
2. everyone who has a job must be evaluated at some point
3. individuals who cannot fulfill the requirements should be retrained or replaced
4. the battling egos of karen lewis and rahm emmanuel... rahm you’re short, karen you’re fat...get over it and think about the kids
5. there weren’t student teaching opportunities at my graduate school, because the school’s faculty union prohibited them (as we were told by our department chair)
6. teachers should not be considered daycare providers, social workers or medical practitioners
7. I have applied to more than 600 jobs in the past two years and have only recently become a part-time employee earning not quite twice minimum wage
8. if you exhibit at mccormick place you are not allowed to plug into an electrical socket or move a table even six inches, the union has to do it - and they’ll charge you for it
9. parents need to be responsible for what their children do - not teachers
10. 12.5 million people are unemployed in the united states
11. “absolute power corrupts absolutely”
12. in general, negotiation means compromise on both sides - this isn’t about “breaking” either side - i highly doubt that either the chicago school board or teacher’s union will be voting for the republican party - and if you’re voting for the green party - well i have no words
13. books absolutely need to be provided the first day of class - shame on the Board of Ed
14. the NATO summit - what a colossal cluster and waste of time and resources
15. if standardized tests don’t accurately assess current curriculum, either the test, or the curriculum need to change
16. there should be air conditioning in all public schools, but you’re going to have to reform the entire system of municipal building codes, permit acquisition and construction in the city to do this...good luck with that...(yes, talk to any architect who has worked on the city’s education facilities)
17. I had a plumber walk out of my apartment because we had installed our own dishwasher 15 years before...because it was not union installed. never mind that the job for which we needed him had nothing to do with said dishwasher

i will support the union because i am a liberal and unions are the only institution where many individuals can be treated and compensated fairly - i just wish we lived in a country where individuals were respected in such a way that unions were no longer necessary.