Waiting for Superman playing on Epix over next 24 hours...

Waiting for Superman A very simplistic movie with one theme and one theme alone: teacher unions are the reasons American public schools are in bad shape. While the point that unions can become an evil in themselves, I have worked in jobs where workers were not allowed to organize together, and the end result was employees were abused. Without labor unions, employees will be taken advantage of. What most American workers take for granted, insurance, protection from wild pay cuts, and a steady schedule with guaranteed hours, those, non-unionized workers usually do not have.

The Catholic Church has for centuries been one of the driving forces behind unions because the Church recognizes that the economy exists for the benefit of persons, not persons for the benefit of the economy. This is a fundamental and critical point in understanding the moral argument behind the existence of unions. Where the super wealthy, who are in the super minority, believe that workers exist only to build their profits, i.e., people exist only to render to the economy

Having said that, unions benefit the person only when their members respect work. There is an inherent value in their work, but when the work ethic is obliterated, i.e., when the point of life becomes luxury, living for the weekends, and retirement, there is neither respect for persons or for the economy. I do not believe labor unions create a narcissistic, Epicurean worldview. Labor unions function well only in societies that are religiously grounded. I am thinking particularly of 19th and 20th century England. As England became increasingly uprooted in its religious inspiration in the late 20th century, its unions became oppressive, corrupt, and worked against the common good of the nation.

While I am not one of those "religious" conservatives who quixotically fights for crumbs like the right of public officials to pray during public ceremonies, I do think a reason our school unions are failing is there is no universal guiding ethic of the good amongst teachers today. They do not see their calling as one from the divine. They do not see knowledge as something sacred. Nor do they see their students as children of a covenant who work to improve and preserve the world as tenders of a creation that is not of our own making. Instead, a nihilism has entered our culture at its mind: our education system. Education is seen only in pragmatic terms: what kind of job can I get if I learn the material? Knowledge is no longer seen as sacred; knowledge is just a ticket to wealth. There are fundamental cultural problems that have laid ruin to the American educational system (yes, we know poor families who do not put value in an education are doing no favors to their children). But I do not believe the splitting of our cultural foundations, which is the reason our schools are broken, is reason enough to get rid of labor unions, as this movie's director concludes. Get rid of teacher labor unions nation-wide and the same problems will exist but the eventual addition of labor abuse. 3/10