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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

#361

Post by pantaloony »

gruez wrote: post #276
LanceH wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Trump did not lose the popular vote. There is no contest for the popular vote. Perhaps one party should try moving a bit to campaign according to the actual contest at hand, rather than try to rewrite the rules. You assume the Democrats would win a popular vote easily. First, Republicans would actually campaign in California for a change. They might even move left a tad on some issues. Democrats might decide it's the…

>Trump did not lose the popular vote. I seriously hope you're baiting and don't actually believe that. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2016_United_States_presidentia... Nominee Donald Trump Hillary Clinton [...] Popular vote 62,984,828 65,853,514 secondary source: https://www.fec.gov/resources/cms-content/documents/federale...

They key part seems to be:

> There is no contest for the popular vote.

And that since the rules weren’t “whoever wins the national popular vote is president” we can’t know how campaigns and voters would have behaved under that rule set, making appeals to the “popular vote” meaningless. A position which I actually agree with, despite very much not liking the last couple R presidents who won despite “losing” the (meaningless, and not a useful measure of much given the above) popular vote.

It’s fun to complain about when your (our, perhaps) person loses but is about as meaningful as “our team should have won because we had more men-on-base”. Well, OK, but baseball is played to optimize for runs because that’s how you win, so no, you shouldn’t have won, and also if the other team had been optimizing for men-on-base you may still have lost—we simply can’t know.

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

#362

Post by chosenbreed37 »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #209
eaandkw wrote: post #150

I have pretty much given up on everybody at this point. I have already pulled my kid from school and will not send them back. I am in a single income family and I am now working from home. All actions and purchases at this point are to help us to become more independant from the system. Society and government at large has shown itself to be unreliable and undependable. I am also making longer term plans to move out o…

I think one of the things that has been so disheartening to me about the pandemic is that it has shown how we just can't really do anything anymore in the US. I mean, just look at PPE. I understand being a little flat footed when the pandemic first started, but it's been nearly 6 months now. I would have expected mass mobilization to pump out N95 masks, gloves, gowns, face shields, etc. by the millions. I mean, look…

It is true that the pandemic has brought to the fore some things that could be improved. I'm not based in the US but I think it has a lot going for it. We may argue about some of the drawbacks associated with the status quo but this is the country that landed people on the moon. It has brought us Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Coca Cola, Starbucks, Hollywood, Disney, etc. In spite of the retoric from some quarters it still welcomes people from all over the world. And what is more they almost immediately identify themselves as American and embrace the values and start making working towards the American dream. I think you'd struggle to find a better place in terms of upward mobility. Certainly not in Europe. I think we have to see it in terms of trade offs. The things that some admire in other nations come at a cost. And in some cases can't really happen in the US because the policies don't scale as well. There may be other nations catching up in some areas. But I think America is still a great nation.

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

#363

Post by larntz »

ashtonkem wrote: post #196
xnyan wrote: post #162

Thinking about having a kid. There's no way I would ever have a kid in my current US state. Not saying anyone has done it well vs rest of the world, but there are clearly states (and counties/cities) that have done a much better job at protecting human life than others. As someone who has lived in the US South for most of my childhood and adult life, I truly don't think it's responsible to have children here if you h…

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

I think people have felt the same about having children throughout most of history.

Do you want a child born into slavery?

Do you want a child subject to a totalitarian government?

Do you want a child born into extreme poverty or famine?

I feel like if you want to have a kid you have one and you deal with whatever adversity comes along.

Take the opportunity to prepare your child to deal with the world that exists regardless of the circumstances. The more children that grow up with thoughtful parents that prepare them to face problems in the more possibility the world will be a better place in the future.

I'm sure my argument isn't well thought at being that it's 4:30pm on a Friday, but I really feel like regardless of the issues we face in society today we are living in the best time to be alive ever and if you have the means to care for a child, and you want children, there's nothing that should stop you from having one.

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

#364

Post by tareqak »

ran3824692 wrote: post #245
seibelj wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't understand the logic around the left's hatred of charters. Parents choose to send their kids there - if the existing public school was so good, why would they send them somewhere else? It's simply about choice, and sending your own kids to the best possible option. No one would ever deny their own children the best possible education available. It's so clearly about administrators and professionals over the n…

I went to a high school in Cali that was converted to a charter school. As far as I could tell, the main change was that they kicked out all the kids with poor grades or other problems. That is the polar opposite of "choice", it was about increasing inequality and it was completely disgusting.

Wow, so charter schools allow for stack-ranking their pupils all the out of the school if desired? Is there a list of reasons that a school cannot use to suspend or expel a student up somewhere? In addition, a list of active conditions with associated constraints for when they can?

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

#365

Post by aaomidi »

tathougies wrote: post #203
aaomidi wrote: post #160

The federal government is doing this on purpose to kill public schools.

Public schools have failed students, especially minorities. Good

This is completely false. Mismanaged school systems have failed minorities. Rampant wage theft and inequality has failed minorities.

Schools can only do so much within a broken society and broken system. They were doing the best they can with the tools given to them.

How does public schooling failing help minorities in any way what so ever?

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

#367

Post by aaomidi »

ed25519FUUU wrote: post #348
aaomidi wrote: post #160

The federal government is doing this on purpose to kill public schools.

Honestly, outside of teacher unions who is in favor of the public school status quo right now? Public school performance is pretty universally reviled. By all object measurements it's been failing for a long time. Let's tear public education down and rebuild it. We seem to be doing that with police forces so why not rethink education also?

What happens in between the time of rebuilding it? Why were other countries able to repair and mend their education system without putting the lives of teachers, children, and parents at risk?

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

#368

Post by gorbachev »

My wife is a teacher. She's quitting in two weeks so that she can give her mandatory 30-day notice in time for the beginning of the semester.

The planning being done for the next school year where we live is complete bullshit. The politicians and administrators running the planning have no idea about the realities.

They are driving these hybrid models with kids doing remote and in-person learning in alternative days/weeks with the in-person class sizes being about one third of the normal class size. To do that they would need at least twice the amount of teachers (one to teach in-person, and one to teach remotely to kids staying at home), possibly even more. Are they planning on hiring more teachers? No.

It's going to be a complete shitshow even without teachers quitting en masse.

There's this completely unrealistic sense among the people in charge that teachers will just magically make it work with no additional training, no proper support, no additional resources, nothing.

And I'm not even addressing the difficulties families, especially those that have multiple kids and/or can't work from home, will have with these proposed schedules.

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

#369

Post by ciarannolan »

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?

>Are you giving up on society yet?

The answer to this for me depends on what the election in November holds.

Making a mistake once and having to live with it for 4 years is manageable. Institutions can recover. But another 4 years of this is would be an unmitigated disaster for the republic.

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

#370

Post by Wowfunhappy »

jackcosgrove wrote: post #323
jt94mf90d wrote: post #284

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How did nyc mess up? I can just think of the nursing homes, but that was due to cdc guidelines, which coumo had to implement additional guidelines.

It was the subway. Extensive use of the subway is what sets NYC apart from all other cities in the US, and it was the main vector. NYC should have been much more diligent about cleaning the subway and limiting concurrent access. I understand due to the sheer volume and necessity of subway use the chosen policies may have been the best. But the subway has been overcrowded and near the breaking point for years and litt…

I've been in a lot of subway cars where you're so packed in, you can't move an inch. Even if the NYC subway was twice its capacity, I don't think you would have had the level of social distancing necessary to do much about COVID. Maybe it would have been less bad, but I think it's hard to say.

And remember, if the subway capacity was increased, subway ridership would likely increase as well, as it becomes a more appealing mode of transport.

What NYC really should have done is shut down businesses on March 1 instead of March 15. But... I don't know, I think that's a lot to ask of politicians. The public would not have responded well to schools being closed and restaurants being shuttered. We needed a wake-up call.

By contrast, I feel like Florida, Georgia, etc have really had that wake-up call, and have chosen to flout it anyway. I don't have much sympathy.

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