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A follow-up from TPM Reader LF …
In your recent post about Covid and school closures, I think you get something very right when you talk about the PhD and elite scolds demanding schools remain open no-matter-what. There is one element in all of this that I think you do not fully appreciate—the anger and legitimate fear that teachers have been living with for the entirety of the pandemic.
I am a college teacher, my partner teaches high school, my friends teach at every level of the educational system. During the pandemic, many have retired early or quit, many of those who have stayed have only done so because they are too young to retire and too old to do something else. Just to be clear, the kids are alright. Almost all teachers love teaching–given how shitty the job is, why else would we do it?
The problems with teaching are also the same as they’ve always been–the parents, the school board, the local and state governments. We get it, they pay us shit, dictate idiotic curriculum and blame us when their kids grow up to be queer/communist/atheists—same as it ever was. What is new is that we are now being asked—actually not even asked—told that we must be heroes.
Everyone talks about how schools are a young population, so schools are safer than most other institutions. Even you wrote something like that in a recent tweet.
“And despite the totally out of control spread of omicron now ripping through schools I think it makes sense to keep them open because of the mix of generally mild outcomes for kids and the availability of vaccines.”
What the fuck, am I chopped liver to you? From a teacher’s perspective, school is a place where you spend 8 hours in poorly ventilated, densely packed rooms with the least vaccinated people in America (the young). Last semester I taught a class with 150 people in a subterranean room—no mask mandate, no vaccine mandate, voluntary testing if someone had symptoms.
You wrote in your post today…
“We shifted back to in-person instruction once vaccines were widely deployed, backstopping the great majority of the people from bad outcomes from COVID infections. By the fall of 2021 we also collectively had much more knowledge about COVID, how to operate schools in relative safety with a mix of masking, ventilation and testing.”
While we may know about masking, ventilation, testing and vaccination—in many of the classrooms in this nation we are not requiring masking, ventilation, testing or vaccination. All of this discussion of masking, ventilation, testing and vaccination is little more than performative ethical posturing of the ‘think of the poor children’ crowd. As a teacher, I don’t care about the posturing. I care about what is happening in the room in front of me. This is a job safety issue, not a political issue. In most of the country masks and vaccines are not required. As for ventilation, I expect to see that fixed right after states and municipalities deal with the endemic asbestos and black mold problem that pervades schools across the nation.
So, I am furious, almost all the teachers I know are furious. I love teaching, but that doesn’t mean I want to risk my life to do so. At a minimum, I expect that all students be required to be masked and vaccinated to attend in person. Short of that, I’m gonna go remote whenever the case counts start going up. Fuck anyone who demands otherwise. Fuck ‘em twice if they tell me how much they respect teachers while the refuse enact even the most basic safety protocols that would make our jobs safer.
