Unions: A Taboo Subject?

I thought that this would be something that is covered in our classes. I mean, most of us are going to be joining a teacher's union in the not-so-distant future, right? But then again, practicality does not seem to be the main drive of this semester. All my classes are theory based; which is great but I still feel like the theory and 'higher learning' should come AFTER the basic hands on experience and the basic everyday knowledge that we need to have to survive in a school.

What about standards and legalities for situations such as fights between students or students attempting to harm us? I know we want to paint the schools as safe places to work and that each school has it own guidelines but we should go over some of this stuff. For example; a teacher at a school in my home county got assaulted by one of his students. He was stabbed fourteen times by the high schooler before, in what any other situation would be self-defense, he struck the student to stop the attack. This teacher was removed from his position and sued by the parents of the student for striking the kid who had stabbed him.

In my own school a health class teacher, a Vietnam Veteran, saved a student's life when, during a fight, he was pushed through a window. The shattered glass cut an artery in the kid's arm which the teacher, using wartime instincts and training, pinched and tied off with his fingers, stopping a fatal loss of blood (which could have occurred in under two minutes). The grateful parents of the child then sued the teacher because he had not worn sterile gloves when saving their son's life. In class, the teacher later told us that he "does not normally carry surgical gloves on his person." Which is a ridiculous assumption and demand to make on teachers.

We are there to educate your children, not be police, nurses, doctors, psychiatrists, pharmacists, nutritionists, and human pin cushions for when Johnny feels a bit stabby. We're not paid nearly well enough to do all of those jobs. And on top of that most parents won't even let us teach without having some sort of complaint that their child is not getting the best treatment out of all of the children. Unions protect us from this insanity; but they also cause more of it. Because of Unions teachers who should not be teaching are still in schools; tenure and contracts and union pressures make it so that a teacher practically has to kill a student in front of a class before they are removed from their job (yet teachers who risk their own lives to save a student, or who are literally protecting their own life get sued for doing so?).

It seems to me that the idea of unions and the pros and cons of joining them, if not the pros and cons of their existence, should be brought up at least once in at least one class. The only conversation I had about unions this whole semester occurred at a table at my friend's wedding reception with a person who shovels grain for a living (A person, who I might add, has two Bachelor's and a Master's degree).