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Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#331

Post by baddox »

_qn5w wrote: post #229
ashtonkem wrote: post #196

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ditto, except I’m dubious about the prospect of having a child in America.

You’re fulfilling the Idiocracy prophecy. Those who think about their life choices are less likely to breed than those who are more reckless and have children with less hesitation. The similar survival rate of children of the two groups means the more-reckless genes & culture will out-propagate the less-reckless genes & culture. I’m pretty sure less-reckless is what we need more of, but without some extreme and quest…

You probably also don’t want to propagate the gene for “I don’t really want to have kids, but I’m still going to because I think I’m better than the people who are already having kids.”

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#332

Post by treis »

Kapura wrote: post #110
cheerlessbog wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where does she work that pays $30k for an experienced teacher? Teacher pay sucks

She's in Colorado. The teachers' union agreed to a pay cut & freeze during the Bush financial crisis; pay had had only started to rise again a few years ago. This is somewhat of a digression, but the extremely low rate of teacher pay (for a job that requires a Master's degree) limits the pool of available teachers greatly. The people taking these jobs typically must have some other way of supporting their family; eit…

> the extremely low rate of teacher pay (for a job that requires a Master's degree) limits the pool of available teachers greatly.

Teacher pay is not extremely low. The median teacher salary is usually pretty close to the median salary for the state. Plus they get good benefits, a pension, and much more time off than other jobs. It's a solid middle class life.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#333

Post by twblalock »

MattGaiser wrote: post #289
newspheasant wrote: post #278

My wife is a teacher and starting school (in person) in a week and a half. There’s no answers to questions like: - Do they have the budget for counseling when students and teachers pass away? - When a teacher gets sick, what substitute teacher is going to want to teach an exposed class (also, they’ll be making sub plans with covid?)? - When they’re sick are will they be getting additional sick leave? - Do they get wo…

Even on the outside, it seems like pushing kids back into the classroom is poorly thought out. I can't imagine the shitshow it must seem like on the inside.

The problem is, remote education has been a complete disaster.

I know a few teachers. Apparently their students found out that the state was unwilling to hold anyone back a year during the pandemic, they shared this information with each other, and now a substantial amount of them are not doing any work.

In some classes, more than half the students are permanently absent! Either their parents don't know, or don't care, or are unable to provide internet access.

One solution is to get students back into classrooms. Another is to design a remote learning system that actually works, with enforcement of attendance and where grades actually matter, but that is probably not something our substandard education system is able to achieve.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#334

Post by morelisp »

bpodgursky wrote: post #287
dvdhnt wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even if that is a cause, so? But the real issues revolve around a lack of oversight, small budgets, corruption, and exclusionary practices that hurt already marginalized groups. Edit: "your mask is slipping" isn't a productive characterization. What I meant was, your statement comes off as bias - "tribes", "the left", "protecting itself against competition" all scream pro-capitalist propaganda on a topic that, frankl…

There's fundamentally no connection between the health of a union and the quality of the product. That's not the point of the union -- the point is protecting workers! Nobody argued that meatpackers should unionize so they could pack more meat! So it's entirely reasonable to separate the reasons for the NEA to (1) exist, and (2) dislike charter schools -- that is, because their job is to protect teachers -- from the…

The current situation in US education strongly suggests that whatever other failings you want to ascribe to teachers unions, the interests of teachers and students are much more closely aligned than the interests of administrators who are planning to murder both other groups.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#335

Post by beepboopbeep »

There is no excuse for this behavior from politicians and the public at large. This is selfish ignorance of the utmost degree.

It is, at face value, ridiculous to even think of re-opening schools. The real story is the total and complete abdication of their duties by elected politicians. Faced with a tough choice, they'd rather let people die and systems collapse then take responsibility. Despite watching this unfold in the news and social media for months, these people chose to ignore it and shrug or, as we've seen with kemp, purposefully stop other governments from enacting policies, and now thousands will die.

Why these politicians haven't been dragged out into the street is beyond me. We are going to soar clean over 200,000 people dead in no time-- many of which were preventable.

Just imagine-- if a contractor's shoddy work resulted in 3 people being killed, they'd be hauled into court on gross negligence charges. Yet...politicians are being given a pass. That's not ok.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#336

Post by seniorgarcia »

enraged_camel wrote: post #175
rpiguy wrote: post #163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is ridiculous fear mongering. There are 5.1 million people working in hospitals. https://datausa.io/profile/naics/hospitals 800/5100000 = .00016 They are therefore three times less likely to die from Covid than the general population. Schools across Europe have opened. Children rarely spread the disease. Doctors recommend schools open. Twenty times as many children died of the flu last year than from COVID. Deat…

>> Schools across Europe have opened. Children rarely spread the disease. Doctors recommend schools open. False on all three counts. Stop spreading misinformation and propaganda, thanks.

>> Schools across Europe have opened

That's not wrong. At least in France and Germany schools reopened 2 weeks before summer break with near full attendance.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#337

Post by shreyansj »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #297
not2b wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is a consequence of ideologies that have become popular in the US both in politics and in business. Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable. A mandate that people wear masks is not acceptable. Having manufacturing capacity to make low-value products in large numbers in the US is bad business when poorer countries can do it for less. Having spare inventory is bad, because just-in-time man…

So you think it would be better under a different political leader? I think it’s great that you’re still such an optimist

Different political leader - we don't know. A different political leader who was not divisive and dismissive of science - yes, it would have been better.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#338

Post by ed25519FUUU »

MattGaiser wrote: post #299

I have to ask you Americans. Are you giving up on society yet? I'm Canadian, and it is surreal watching the country below us completely waste the lockdown so they can go to beaches and bars and then urgently move to shoving kids back into the classroom. Do you still feel that you can count on your government? On your neighbours?

As an American, I'm absolutely OK with each state's governors making safety determination for their own state.

The current death rate in each state can very easily be explained by actions the governors in those states took. They'll answer to their voters, and we'll see if their PR campaign blitz is enough to save them.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#339

Post by AnimalMuppet »

dragonwriter wrote: post #275
pdonis wrote: post #200

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The system you describe only applies to Presidential elections. The federal government is a lot more than just the President, and so are its problems.

No, the votes of people in certain states being more valuable than those in others is also true of the House and Senate. In fact, the inequity in voting power produced by the Electoral College is a direct consequence of that in the structure of the House and Senate, since the latter is apportioned simply (except for DC) by adding the apportionment of House and Senate seats.

It is (mostly) not true of the House.

Yes, some states have House seats that represent somewhat fewer people than some other states. I suppose, technically, that means the votes in that state are "more valuable". It's far different from the Senate, though.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#340

Post by scarface74 »

ghufran_syed wrote: post #297
not2b wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All of this is a consequence of ideologies that have become popular in the US both in politics and in business. Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable. A mandate that people wear masks is not acceptable. Having manufacturing capacity to make low-value products in large numbers in the US is bad business when poorer countries can do it for less. Having spare inventory is bad, because just-in-time man…

So you think it would be better under a different political leader? I think it’s great that you’re still such an optimist

On the state level, no sane governor would sue mayors for requiring face masks.

https://www.politico.com/news/2020/07/16/georgia-mayors-bria...

On the federal level, no sane President would go out of his way to force states to give the CDC less information.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/07/14/us/politics/trump-cdc-cor...

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