It has been a while since the 12,000 public school students in Newton have studied history — or anything else, for that matter. Since the Newton Teachers Association declared a strike on Jan. 18, all classes and activities at the city’s 22 schools have been canceled and classroom learning has come to a halt.

So perhaps this is a good moment for an impromptu lesson from American history.

Early on the morning of Aug. 3, 1981, the union representing the nation’s air traffic controllers — the Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization — called a strike. As government employees, the controllers were prohibited by law from walking off the job. Nevertheless, 95 percent of PATCO’s members had voted to strike for higher pay and shorter hours. Knowing that thousands of flights would have to be canceled until they returned to work, they were counting on public pressure to compel the Federal Aviation Administration to come to terms on a new contract.

But at a White House press conference a few hours later, President Ronald Reagan issued an ultimatum.

“I must tell those who fail to report for duty this morning they are in violation of the law,” he said, “and if they do not report for work within 48 hours, they have forfeited their jobs and will be terminated.” Two days later, only 1,300 air traffic controllers had returned to work. Reagan fired the 11,345 who hadn’t.

As a onetime Hollywood union leader who had led a strike, Reagan took no pleasure in moving against the controllers — not least because PATCO had been one of the few unions to endorse him during the 1980 presidential campaign. But federal law explicitly banned government workers from striking, and Reagan believed that failing to uphold the law would set a terrible precedent, opening the door to further extortion from other public-employee unions. It would also convey a deeply corrosive message — that laws intended to protect the public could be flouted with impunity. At his press conference, he praised those air traffic controllers who had remained at their posts and quoted one who had resigned from the union and reported to work, saying: “How can I ask my kids to obey the law if I don’t?”

Members of the Newton Teachers Association should have asked the same question before abandoning their jobs. Even if the striking teachers don’t care about the toxic example they are setting, Newton’s taxpayers and elected officials certainly ought to. It is outrageous that the union’s 2,000 teachers and other school personnel have left so many families in the lurch, forcing parents into a desperate scramble to make arrangements for day care, throwing children’s routines into turmoil, intensifying stress and anxiety across the community, and wreaking particular havoc on children with learning and health disabilities. Worse, they are doing so in brazen violation of the law.

The statutory language is unequivocal: “No public employee or employee organization shall engage in a strike,” commands Chapter 150E of the Massachusetts General Laws, “and no public employee or employee organization shall induce, encourage, or condone any strike, work stoppage, slowdown, or withholding of services.” Newton’s striking teachers are openly flouting the bedrock principle that in exchange for the power to bargain collectively, government workers are strictly forbidden to go on strike. The law is adamant about that, and for good reason: Unlike in the private sector, strikes by public employees are designed to inflict distress not on management but on innocent third parties — ordinary citizens — and to deploy that distress as a bargaining weapon.

Like the air traffic controllers in 1981, Newton’s unionized teachers — whose salaries average $93,000 and come with generous benefits — are not striking over some towering moral principle. They are striking because they want more money and guaranteed future raises. That is no justification for organized lawbreaking. Newton’s teachers have no more right to desert their classrooms than they do to shoplift or commit fraud. They should be told what Reagan told the PATCO members: Get back to work or you’re fired.

The Gipper took some heat for his hard line, but Americans strongly backed him. In a nationwide Gallup poll, 59 percent of respondents approved of Reagan’s quick move to shut down the strike. A subsequent Associated Press-NBC News survey put public support at an even higher 64 percent. As a matter of both good government and wise politics, government employees who walk off the line should be terminated.

Since Jan. 18, Newton’s teachers have deliberately been breaking the law. Let them know they have 24 hours to return to their jobs or they’ll have no jobs to return to.