At “What Were They Thinking”, one of the things we enjoy is exposing ideas, statements and actions that — while having some basis in law and logic — seem woefully disconnected from the practical issues of day-to-day life.

Take the case of the institutional indignation over the small but growing business of teacher lesson plan exchangees.

In last Sunday’s New York Times Winnie Hu tells the story of poorly paid and beleaguered teachers who have developed online exchanges for their lesson plans.  One of them — Teachers Pay Teachers — has, according to the Times, “200,000 registered users, has recorded $600,000 in sales since it was started in 2006 — $450,000 of that in the past year.”

Like Pharisees lecturing Jesus that it is a sin to work on Sunday, the education bureaucracy has expressed concern over this unusual outbreak of teacher entreprenurism.

First to express its concern was the education “academy.”  According to Joseph McDonald professor at the Steinhardt School of Culture, Education and Human Development at New York University.

“Teachers swapping ideas with one another, that’s a great thing,” he said. “But somebody asking 75 cents for a word puzzle reduces the power of the learning community and is ultimately destructive to the profession.”

If a 75 cent lesson plan puts our entire education profession at risk we’re in more trouble than we think.

The local school board representative got right to the point.  Money!

According to Robert N. Lowry, deputy director of the New York State Council of School Superintendents, “To the extent that school district resources are used, then I think it’s fair to ask whether the district should share in the proceeds.”

We suggest that neither Lowry nor McDonald are living on a primary or secondary school teacher’s salary.

What can “the academy” and “the education bureaucracy” be thinking?

Sadly, we no longer invest in our teachers.  We don’t recruit them from the top graduates of our university.  We pay them subsistence living.  And more often than not they are on their own when it comes to providing basic supplies for the classroom.  School systems historically underfund and mismanage their education systems.  Now that the enterprising teachers have made a go of it people either want to shut them down on alleged ethical grounds or get a cut of the action.

We’d note that the New York Times article has prompted considerable debate among teachers themselves.  However it strikes us as mildly outrageous that the education elite embrace things like tenure, consulting contracts, outrageously expensive text books and ivory tower remedies but then balk when it comes to teachers actually getting compensated for effective lesson plans it took them years to develop and refine.

No wonder that the plight of education and the quality of today’s teachers have brought together the oddest of bedfellows –Newt Gingrich and Al Sharpton.   In their appearance on Meet the Press yesterday both talked about “bold reforms.”

We’ve recently had painful reminders that Gordon Geko was wrong.  Greed is not good.  And anyone who took a high school history class knows that part of the American heritage is the rejection of elitism and an embrace of the common man’s struggle for the pursuit of happiness.

Even if you are a teacher.