If you were born in the 1950s or earlier, your parents likely taught you that teachers were to be obeyed and respected. (You may have even learned that lesson if you were born later than the 1950s.) If you got into trouble with the teacher, you knew you were in deep trouble with mom and dad. (I was a good kid, so I didn’t have to bear the wrath of an angry parent.) The teachers were in the right, and you would lose your TV privileges or be grounded.

More than those rules, teachers were often viewed as caring and compassionate human beings; after all, they were entrusted with educating our children to prepare them for life. I have my own favorite teachers who more than fulfilled that promise, and many of you may have had your own special educators.

But I think we are learning that many (and I’m not saying all) in the teaching profession are betraying their mandate. Whether true or not, they believe that they are being disrespected, needlessly criticized, and have grown to have disdain for parents and children. Much of their disappointment is energized by the teachers’ unions, whose job it is to increase their membership and make sure they’re getting their money’s worth—whether that is through funding candidates or tasking teachers to teach subjects that would never have been included in the curriculum in the 1950s. Now the community sees many teachers as their adversaries, who disdain their students and their jobs.

Compassion seems to be off the agenda.

What happened?

To some degree, teachers may be justified in feeling marginalized. They don’t make the largest salaries; they must often defer to authorities in selecting curriculum; parents defend their misbehaving children against the teachers—we could list many reasons for their being disgruntled. The fact remains, though, that teachers have been given a mission to educate and guide our kids. And for many, being a teacher is more about misusing power, intimidating children, and acting out their grievances. The key area of unacceptable teacher behavior falls under the definition of bullying students:

I define teacher bullying as a pattern of conduct, rooted in a power differential, that threatens, harms, humiliates, induces fear in or causes students substantial emotional stress.

But in particular, the types of bullying that occur among teachers have taken on a whole new meaning. Although there are teachers who physically or verbally attack students, I believe they are a small minority. Today’s bullying is seen in the areas of (1) limiting expression of ideas to a progressive agenda, and when the student steps outside of that agenda, he or she is verbally punished; (2) encouraging, even intimidating students into exploring alternate genders, in an environment where these kinds of student inquiries are encouraged and rewarded; (3) insisting that children who are not black or of other minorities are less than human and repeatedly degrading their non-existent past; (4) alienating children from their parents by discouraging them from sharing their classroom experience with them; and (5) insisting that students who disagree with them are demonstrating that they are as disturbed as the teachers have insinuated. These behaviors by the teachers are demonstrated with the teaching of CRT, gender affirmation, and white supremacy. But the teachers are overstepping their roles; they are indoctrinating through acts of intimidation and power.

These are the reasons that we need to exert our own power toward the teachers and their unions: your interactions with children are abusive and meet the definition of bullying. This type of behavior is unacceptable under any conditions, and if you continue to act in these ways, your job will be at risk. The unions have to be forced into acknowledging these revised expectations for teacher performance.

We must take back education and our children.