The Elephant speaks: The real purpose of firing teachers is to distract everyone from the community's problems and from the local government's inability to address them.

At the risk of sounding cynical, the elephant believes that the purpose of firing teachers is not to improve education in New Bedford. The real purpose of firing teachers is to distract everyone from the community's problems and from the local government's inability to address them.

At the end of the Falkland's War in 1982 I ran across one of the more amusing quotes I've ever read in a newspaper. A woman In Argentina was being interviewed shortly after it was announced that the British had won the war.

"A few days ago the British had no ships, no planes, were freezing to death and starving. Now all of a sudden they've won. You can't believe anything the government says."

Pia Durkin and her supporters understand that community problems are perpetuated by the behavior of community members. They also understand our cultural taboo against admitting to the existence of parental incompetence. (Parents are sacred and unimpeachable. Teachers are just union thugs.) They don't want to appear as though they are doing nothing so they've chosen to distract everyone's attention by attacking teachers.

Blaming the results of bad parenting on bad parents would cost money, use up precious political capital, and turn large numbers of dumb but otherwise loyal voters into enemies. It's far safer to blame teachers and stir up the hornet's nest for a while. When enough noise has been generated and enough pressure brought to bear, they'll probably call off their stupid plan or scale it back. When asked in the future why they haven't addressed New Bedford's educational problems, they'll simply claim that they tried but were prevented from doing so by all those union thugs.

Stay out of the hot sun folks.