The Fair Deal

To the Editor:

In a fair deal, everybody must compromise most of the time. To arrive at this condition, there must be a reasonable balance of forces to persuade each side to make a deal deemed fair to both. This is not only true, but an absolute necessity when dealing with economic-political forces. In fact, it forms the basis of our political system. Every high school student should know that it was the struggle between John Adams, the Federalist, and Thomas Jefferson, the state rights advocate, which laid the foundation of our political system as we know it. Without this balance of forces there cannot be a fair deal and no democracy.

Now look at the situation with respect to our educational system. We have a large group of persons who not only hold a right to their employment, but in the same breath want to bargain as a group. It cannot be done fairly, but in fact it is. Why is it unfair? The teachers of all people should recognize the impossibility of such a system to be fair. At such a bargaining table, the employee, i.e., the teachers, hold all the trump cards. They cannot be replaced, they cannot be fired, and they hold a lot of political power in their numbers. Under these conditions, a fair deal is impossible. There simply is no balance of power when one side has all the advantage.

Fair to whom you ask? Not the state whose main interest is to keep the politicians in power and who have no financial incentive and every political incentive to give in to demands no matter how excessive the consequences to the rest of us. We, the private sector, do not count as far as I can see, and we have not received a fair deal for these many years.

The result has been not a better education, far from it. Think of the damage a single unfit teacher can do to the education of so many in his or her career or perhaps 30 years. I shudder to think of it. I ask your help. We, the people, must make our voices heard, not only those who have misused their position to disenfranchise the rest of us.

Oscar Berendsohn

34 Appleblossom Lane, Newtown                                    June 3, 2011