New York, NY, May 28, 2024 –Bill Pirkle, who holds a degree in mathematics, has completed his new book, “The Rotten Apple: How the Teachers’ Union Destroyed Our Schools”: a gripping, true account of the author’s own experiences in witnessing the control a teacher’s union can have over a school board, and the detrimental impact it can have on the education system, oftentimes leaving students in the dust.
After working as an emergency substitute teacher for over three years, teaching from kindergarten to twelfth grade, author Bill Pirkle was appalled by what he saw, especially in grades 7 through 12. He began attending school board meetings and making suggestions on how to improve the schools, and also wrote “The Pirkle Report” for his local paper, trying to explain to the public what was going on.
The school board refused to even consider his suggestions, despite his experience of actually having been in the classroom. It was then that he realized the school board was afraid to make any changes that might upset the teachers’ union, and thus, “The Rotten Apple” was born to show how the teachers’ union actually controls and runs the schools.
“In the ’50s, the schools worked,” writes Pirkle. “Now they don’t. What changed? Did the children’s brains change? Did the parents change? No. What changed is that there was no teachers’ union in the ’50s. Now there is. Now we can’t evaluate teachers, test teachers, and fire bad teachers. Now they are in total control of teaching since they present themselves as experts, having gotten a degree in education. They presume and assert that they know more about this than the people who should run the schools.”