Dear editor,In 1972 I stood in an office where the teachers had gathered together for the sole purpose of overthrowing the government in power.My mother was one of those teachers. They were militant and angry then; they are still militant and angry today. The teachers and BCTF as I’ve seen it over 40 years are an angry, disgruntled group of union workers masquerading as professionals. Their actions and words are the same as any good unionized mill worker. They seem to want design the education system, run and manage it. And also seem to think that the funding is never-ending. I’ve had personal experience with teachers over the years and along the way I discovered something interesting. In my experience teachers are some of the most out-of-touch, insulated, protected and mollycoddled bunch going, with a sense of entitlement. Looking at the age of them it is my observation that few, if any of them, have ever had to work in the real world. Most of them went straight from the artificial world of high school into their next artificial world in taxpayer-subsidized university. Once finished there, they plugged their financial umbilical cords into the taxpayer-funded education system. Completely bypassing any real world experience, they live in a cocoon, which then becomes their reality and frame of reference.When they talk about respect, that is hilarious. This province is $53 billion in debt right now so any extra money would be borrowed money.Who do they think will end up paying that debt with the accruing interest? Yes, the very kids they are teaching.How about some respect for the very people that bust their asses every day to pay taxes that pay the teachers? The government is showing respect for the 99 per cent of people that are not teachers by not caving into the outrageous demands of this Neanderthal thinking BCTF.They continue to compare their pay to teachers in other provinces. As a former contractor if you want to make the same money as someone in another province, then move to another province or change your career or both.It seems the teachers’ union likes to use this issue of competitiveness when it comes to themselves but when it comes to the economy that supplies the taxes that pay them, they support everything but competitiveness. They have an anti-business, anti-private sector, left-wing agenda and have since 1972 and this is the group that has a strong influence over our kids. And now I hear the head cheerleader for the BCTF state that their intention is to get rid of the “bullies” in government. So the militant, let’s-overthrow-the-government attitude from 40 years ago is alive and well today. It’s like a little kid throwing a tantrum when it doesn’t get its own way. Wow, we’ve come a long way. So we have a group that dislikes business, hasn’t been able to get a deal done with any government of the day of any party for 40 years except one year when the bullies of the present government gave them a 16-per-cent raise along with a $3,700 signing bonus, masquerading as professionals and doing their best to hold the taxpayers and their own students to ransom. They live in a utopian world. Get your heads into the real world and get on with your job.Dave Beise,Comox

Comox Valley Record