A Teacher's Answer to Marine's Letter in Response to Obama's Farewell Speech

NOTE: There is a letter floating around the Internet allegedly written by a Marine identified only as “J” who offers a scathing response to President Obama’s farewell address. In that letter, the Marine makes some disparaging comments about teachers and teachers’ unions. This is my answer.

Dear J,

Let me start by expressing my heartfelt thanks for your service to our country. I’m writing this letter as an answer to your own letter in response to President Obama’s farewell address. In it, you detailed your many criticisms of the president’s time in office. While my view on some of the points you made may differ from yours, my main issue concerns comments you made about teachers and teachers’ unions.

As a public school teacher and teachers’ union member, I’d like to clarify some things for you as well as share some thoughts about what my profession is like. First, you refer to teachers’ unions as “bloated.” I wonder what exactly makes you describe them that way because you don’t elaborate in your letter. If teachers’ unions advocate for teachers, who in turn advocate for their students, then at what point is that excessive?

You go on to assert that unions hire teachers. I’m no lawyer, but I’m pretty sure that’s illegal. In fact, I live in a “right-to-work” state, where freeloading workers can enjoy union benefits without having to contribute union dues. These unfair laws have significantly weakened unions without providing any measurable improvement to children’s education. On the contrary, studies have shown that students in states with strong teachers’ unions do better.

After accusing teachers’ unions of doing something they cannot legally do, you accuse them of doing something that makes absolutely no sense. After all, why in the world would anyone want to “hire teachers who can’t teach?” If that’s the case, then why do unions offer a myriad of professional development opportunities that help make good teachers great and great teachers even better? Not to mention all the stringent prerequisites to becoming a teacher in the first place!

As if your baseless claims weren’t bad enough, you then suggest that teachers “can’t be fired.” I assure you, teachers can most definitely be fired. Unions simply fight to make sure their members’ due process rights are respected. I’m sure you can appreciate this, since military personnel cannot be dishonorably discharged without a court martial. Everybody deserves a right to due process under the Constitution, J. Yes, even teachers.

But, you see, the problem isn’t even the question of whether teachers can be fired or not. Rather, the problem is people like you feeling like they can pass judgment on our profession, support policies that hurt us and by extension our students, and spread a false narrative that exacerbates the problem, just so they can turn around and use us as scapegoats. This, combined with unrealistic expectations, lack of support, and yes, poor pay, often creates a work environment with low morale and high turnover, so that very good teachers leave the profession out of frustration, and potentially great teachers refuse to enter it out of fear.

I don’t pretend to know anything about your profession, J. Please don’t presume to know about mine. Sure, you were in a classroom once upon a time as a student, but that’s like me saying I know your job because I watched “Full Metal Jacket.” Honestly, J, I don’t even know if you actually exist, considering that I only found your letter in click-bait, fake news, propaganda web sites. But I do know there are many misguided and misinformed people out there who think like you do. Hopefully, this letter will help them understand the teaching profession a little bit better.

All the Best,

Mr. Ramon Veunes

My Review of Obama's Presidency

When Barack Obama first ran for president, I did not support him. I wasn't very confident in the relatively young, well-spoken Illinois senator’s ability to lead due to his lack of experience, and I felt he needed to just “wait his turn” and defer to more seasoned candidates like Hillary Clinton and John McCain. Well, he didn’t wait, and he won the primary, and then the general election, in historic fashion. As the next four, and then eight years rolled along, there were many highs and lows. How many of each, of course, depends largely on who you ask. This is my own review of Obama’s presidency.

I’ll start with the issue that hits closest to home for me: the opening to Cuba. I definitely felt disappointed that President Obama engaged with the Cuban government without demanding much in return, most notably as it pertained to the promotion of human rights and democracy on the island. However, I recognize that the embargo has not achieved its intended purpose over the past 50+ years. And if this opening to Cuba results in more freedom and democracy for the Cuban people in the long run, I’ll estimate Obama’s actions to have been well worth it.

When it comes to the volatility in places like Iraq, Iran, Libya, and Syria, I honestly see President Obama’s predicament as having been stuck between the proverbial rock and hard place. The problems in that region are part of a continuum that stretches very far back before Obama and may unfortunately continue well past his presidency. It’s hard to argue that as president, Obama didn’t make mistakes when dealing with the Middle East, but it’s also important to understand the context of just how difficult the situation there has been, especially after the U.S. invaded Iraq under George W. Bush. The truth is that, in spite of how events unfolded over there during Obama’s presidency, and even with all the rhetoric from many of his critics saying that he was “too weak,” few Americans would have likely supported any kind of serious military escalation after our experience with the long, drawn-out wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Finally, we come to the Affordable Care Act, or ACA (a.k.a. Obamacare), which was, by most accounts, President Obama’s signature domestic achievement. The battle over the ACA also marked a pivotal moment in the evolution of my political views in a decidedly more progressive direction. This turning point centered around seeing Obama putting his political neck on the line for the sake of passing a law designed to help more people have access to life-saving health care. But my political metamorphosis didn’t just result in me turning toward something; it also resulted in me turning against something else. As I saw the Republicans so vehemently opposing the ACA while offering absolutely no alternative whatsoever, I realized how starkly different my worldview was from theirs when it came to the role of government in our lives. Sure, they threw around platitudes about “freedom” and “choice.” But that led me to some significant questions: How much “freedom” can a person really enjoy when that person can’t afford health care? How much “choice” does a person really have when that person can’t get health care due to a “pre-existing condition?” I realized that the government’s responsibility to defend and protect our right to “life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness” involves the citizens being able to, first and foremost, be healthy. I also realized that, even though capitalism may be the best wealth-creating economic system in history, it is fundamentally immoral for a society to put profit over the well-being of its people. And finally, I realized that a healthy society involves its most fortunate citizens contributing so that the least fortunate can, at the very least, live a life of dignity.

On the whole, I believe President Obama did the best he could, specifically if you take into account both the very difficult challenges he faced when he took office, and the overwhelming circumstances he endured while in it. After all, not many presidents have stared down an economic crisis right from Inauguration Day on the scale that Obama did. The fact that double-digit unemployment, a collapsed real estate market, failing banks, a stock market losing more than half its value, and a bankrupt auto industry now seem almost distant memories for so many is a testament to how far we came under Obama’s leadership. Many deserve credit for helping us climb our way out of the Great Recession, but it would be unfair to deny the president his due for enacting policies that contributed to that recovery.

A review of the president would be incomplete without mentioning the decency, grace, and unpretentiousness that he and his family consistently demonstrated throughout their entire time in the White House. Aside from anyone’s politics, there is little denying that President Obama, First Lady Michelle Obama, and their daughters Malia and Sasha, represented our country in a way that should make all Americans very proud.    

Although he ran a remarkably ethical and scandal-free administration, there were, undoubtedly, shortcomings for President Obama. Being the chief executive, Obama’s inability to work more closely with a very hostile Republican Congress is, in the end, one failure he must own. But with such a concerted and concentrated effort to undermine everything he attempted to do, it becomes harder to put it all on him, particularly when Obama had opponents who were determined not to work with him even when he proposed policies they favored. Regardless of how anyone may feel about Obama’s presidency, the bottom line is, any perceived failure or success by our leaders and representatives is our shared responsibility as citizens, and it is ultimately up to us, the American people, to hold our government accountable.