Every time a teachers’ union is in the news is almost invariably another reminder of why they shouldn’t exist.
This time around the Texas branch of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT) on behalf of teachers who faced discipline over comments about Charlie Kirk’s murder. The lawsuit never actually discloses what they actually did or said except in the most vague language.
But we can pretty clearly identify one of them.
“Teacher 1 is a member of Texas AFT, and until recently served as a high school English teacher in an independent school district near Houston. On the day of Mr. Kirk’s death, Teacher 1 posted questions on her public Facebook page prompting a debate about the assassination of Mr. Kirk and her viewpoint that karma played a role in his death.”
‘That karma played a role in his death.’
Let’s see the actual comments.
Screenshots of posts by two other teachers from Lee High School in Goose Creek ISD east of Houston. The screenshots show posts from one of the teachers writing, “Looks like his so called ‘facts’ caught up with him” and “#Karma is a b*tch.”
That seems to be the likely reference here.
As you may imagine not a single media story covering this bothered specifically citing the comments because that would be unhelpful to their narrative.
Instead there’s boilerplate verbiage like this.
The lawsuit also argues that the policy guiding the investigations is vague and overly broad, creating a widely negative attitude on educators’ freedom of speech and even harming their employment prospects.
The lawsuit argues the actions targeted teachers “for social media posts and other speech made outside the classroom and unrelated to their official duties,” actions the ATF argues were in violation of the First Amendment.
I’m going to speculate that if a prominent transgender activist had been shot and a conservative teacher had been fired for posting “Karma is a b___h”, the media stories would find it relevant to…
1. Discuss his politics in depth
2. Quote what he actually said
Since it’s their people in trouble, the media instead blathers about constitutional speech protection without quoting the speech in question.
I’m not sure what’s worse, teachers’ unions or the media, but they both have the same goal. And it’s pretty obvious what that is.
