And Now, A Word From Great Leader
Some other countries have much more entertaining teachers’ unions than we have. Take for instance South Korea.
The Busan chapter of the Korean Teachers and Educational Workers’ Union held a seminar last year for its members, and authorities have only just learned that more than two-thirds of a 92-page booklet distributed to union members was lifted verbatim from a North Korean history textbook.
The book is filled with North Korean propaganda, which is well-known for its lack of subtlety. One passage reads, “The hero Gen. Kim Il-sung, revered and fervently awaited by his Korean brethren, emerged in a commanding manner.”
The material is occasionally educational. I, for one, didn’t know that Great Leader was a libertarian. “The people of North Korea are the happy few at last liberated from taxation for the first time in the world,” reads an excerpt.
The Digital Chosunilbo found the union antics less amusing. In an editorial headlined, “Teachers’ Union Headed Over the Cliff,” the editors declared, “The union spreads outmoded ideologies, turns education into a battleground, pits teacher against teacher depending on whether they are members, and disrupts every program it finds arduous or disadvantageous to it such as teacher evaluations, performance bonuses, English education at the primary level, stratifying students by academic ability, extra-curricular activities, independent private high schools and foreign-language high schools.”
July 29th, 2006 at 11:38
Sounds a lot like American teachers unions, unfortunately.