Teachers Strike

I realize it's been quite some time since my last post, but the news in Chicago these last few days galvanized me into action.  I can't help but notice a severe failing in logic as I scroll through message boards:

The going opinion is to demonize the teachers for failing to do their jobs.  Angry posts abound, talking about how teachers make too much money, don't work that hard, how the US is lagging drastically behind the rest of the developed world in test scores, and that currently the students are the ones suffering.  That last part is what hits me as incongruent with the rest of their arguments... 

As the teachers are on stirke, they're obviously not in the classrooms.  If they're not in the classrooms, obviously the students are missing a teacher.  If the students are missing their teachers, they're not learning.  But if you listen to some of these arguments, one can almost ascertain that they weren't learning in the first place.  It doesn't really click in my head.  We say that the students suffer because they're missing their education, but follow it up with what a terrible job teachers are doing...are we saying that a bad education is better than no education?  Hmmm.  God I hope not...

Now, we can look at this from a different angle as well: the students suffer because the teachers aren't doing their jobs right?  No one talks about how garbage suffers if Waste Managment goes on stirke.  Or that cars are somehow wronged if steel workers picket.  But if teachers aren't doing their job, it's the youth of the nation that lose.  Correct?  If teachers don't do their job, students lose.  Therefore, if teachers do their job, shouldn't the students win?  Therefore, couldn't one say that teachers doing their job benefits the next generation?  Now, how many other professions could make the argument that they directly impact the quality of a child's upbringing with that level of certainty?  And, therefore, if teachers do in fact play such a weighty role, then don't they indeed deserve higher pay and better benefits?  Doctors go on stirke and the patients suffer.  Teachers strike and the students suffer.  Doctors make, well, let' just say a lot.  Teachers?  Well...

Again, not saying who's right and wrong, just pointing out that if we're arguing that teachers being on strike hurts the students, it makes sense that if they do their jobs, they benefit the students.  So isn't the profession worth it?