UNION OPINION: Lacks discernment

Brent Regan’s “opinion” needs some of Deborah Rose’s “discernment.” The “logic” and “common sense” he spouts makes no sense. To say the most dangerous person in the world is the head of the teachers union? More dangerous than Putin? Or Donald Trump? To praise Thomas Sowell’s thinking of our children as “barbarians,” and the teachers union’s goals as “…penned by Karl Marx?” To say that the teachers union “induced institutional racism of a failing education system?” To say “Unions are advantaged by poorly performing students because this grows membership in the union?”

That is pure imagination, not logic. My discernment tells me that the teachers union is not the same as miners, Teamsters or other “labor” unions. It is not concerned only with members’ welfare or salaries. The AFT is a professional association similar to the organizations of lawyers, doctors, dentists, other professionals. It is concerned with so much more than the false impression Mr. Regan gives. It is false “common sense” to say any union is only “designed to survive and grow.”

The AFT’s constitution and mission is concerned with more than teachers’ welfare and salaries. It clearly emphasizes educational objectives along with professional imperatives. In trying to disparage the AFT as “The greatest threat to the future of the world,” Regan is inferring that unions are bad, when they are a definite constitutional supplement to our democracy, just as the associations of lawyers, doctors. Sorry, Brent, but my discernment tells me that’s NOT common sense. Thanks, Deborah Rose, for your much better common sense.

RON BOOTHE

Kingston