Unions have been so successful at blocking every effort to improve educational performance that a cynic might wonder if they are secretly being paid as unregistered agents of the North Korean and Iranian governments.
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Teachers’ unions’ die-hard opposition to excellence in education is relegating the Unites States to third-world status in tomorrow’s new technology.
The United States no longer produces enough well-educated scientists to compete at top levels in world markets for R & D. Look no farther than the teachers’ unions to identify the culprit.
Unions’ unremitting opposition to rewarding teaching excellence, their insistence upon time-in-grade as the sole criterion for promotion and salary, and their blocking any efforts to fire incompetent teachers have given us a near-bottom ranking in students’ test scores compared to those of other nations.
Add to this unions’ inculcating hostility toward the United States and its founding principles, along with emphasis on feel-good progressive education for socialism, and we are left with too many students fit for little more than mischief-making as union officials and government bureaucrats.
An article in the March 13, 2006, edition of the Wall Street Journal reports, “Multinational companies, drawn by a huge and inexpensive talent pool, are pouring money into research and development in China—a trend that promises to broaden the country’s huge role in the global economy.
“The total number of foreign-invested R&D centers in the country has surged to about 750 from 200 four years ago, according to China’s Ministry of Commerce. And in a survey of multinationals published in September by the United Nations Conference on Trade and Development, China was by far the most frequently cited location for R&D expansion, well ahead of the U.S. and third-place India, China’s chief rival as an emerging innovator....
“Giving impetus to the R&D expansion in sectors from biotechnology to pharmaceuticals to semiconductors is China’s government. Having enlisted foreign investment to transform China into a manufacturing powerhouse over the past few decades, Beijing now is mounting a campaign to strengthen domestic innovation that could help push the country into more advanced niches of the global economy.”
For more extensive background, see
Education vs Outsourcing
Followup - Education vs Outsourcing
Education and Outsourcing: a Bleak Future
Moral Relativity in Mathematics
Teachers’ Unions and Speech Police Are Poisoning Our Future.
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