Hey, you know that economic principle that says competition makes things gooder, and lack of competition makes them less good?

Or the other principle that says poor quality should be rewarded by failure in the market?

The life of a teacher is generally immune from these things because they live in the socialist Utopia of publik edyookayshun. They have a thing called “tenure,” which, if it existed in the real world, would be instantly dismissed as the most retarded idea since New Coke.

Teachers, when they take time off from their summer vacations, generally only come out to defend tenure, teacher’s unions, or some other worthless hibbity. But one superintendent is finally challenging the notion of tenure:

Michelle Rhee, the hard-charging chancellor of the Washington public schools, thinks teacher tenure may be great for adults, those who go into teaching to get summer vacations and great health insurance, for instance. But it hurts children, she says, by making incompetent instructors harder to fire.

…

“If Michelle Rhee were to get what she is demanding,” said Allan R. Odden, a professor at the University of Wisconsin who studies teacher compensation, “it would raise eyebrows everywhere, because that would be a gargantuan change.”

Last month, Ms. Rhee said she could no longer wait for a union response to her proposal, first outlined last summer, and announced an effort to identify and fire ineffective teachers, including those with tenure. The union is mobilizing to protect members, and the nation’s capital is bracing for what could be a wrenching labor struggle.

Imagine any other industry in which a “gargantuan change” would be to go against unions just to be able to fire ineffective employees, and you’re probably imagining a failing industry. Hey, do automakers have unions?

These days, it seems everyone wants to be protected from failure – banks, automaters, teachers – but a free economy thrives and grows precisely because of the positive effects from failure: it cuts fat out and corrects mistakes – by itself. It erases the decay brought about from the exact complacency that zero competition creates.

Tenure is the sacred cow of the teaching world:

By contrast, Kerry Sylvia, 38, said she opposed Ms. Rhee’s proposal.

Although she is an award-winning world history teacher and works long hours to help students at her high school improve, Ms. Sylvia said that without tenure she would nevertheless feel vulnerable to arbitrary firing because she has publicly opposed some Rhee initiatives and speaks out about things like her school’s decrepit heating system.

“Don’t ask me to give up tenure, not even for a moment,” Ms. Sylvia said.

Well, if you shouldn’t have to give up tenure, in what situation should any person ever be fired – even if they do a good job, the might have to worry about arbitrary firing, after all.

Here’s what a professor at the University of Michigan had to say:

“Without tenure,” Dr. Mirel said, “teachers can still face arbitrary firing because of religious views, or simply because of the highly politicized nature of American society.”

Oh, poor baby. Welcome to the real world, in which if you have a boss, you can be fired. That is how jobs work.

Do you wonder what Dr. Mirel, above, is talking about when he talks about teachers’ political views? In other publik edyookayshun news, an 8th grader in the Chicago area undertook an experiment to see how tolerant her education environment was if she wore both a John McCain shirt and a Barack Obama shirt – on different days.

Do I even need to tell you the results?

students weren’t the only ones surprised that she wore a shirt supporting McCain.

“In one class, I had one teacher say she will not judge me for my choice, but that she was surprised that I supported McCain,” Catherine said.

If Catherine was shocked by such passive-aggressive threats from instructors, just wait until she goes to college.

“Later, that teacher found out about the experiment and said she was embarrassed because she knew I was writing down what she said,” Catherine said.

One student suggested that she be put up on a cross for her political beliefs.

“He said, ‘You should be crucifixed.’ It was kind of funny because, I was like, don’t you mean ‘crucified?’ ” Catherine said.

You have to love that a student thought the word was “crucifixed.” Not only are teachers breeding kids to be hot-blooded liberals, they can’t even teach them to get their hate speech right.