Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk • Hacker News Board

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

#451

Post by charwalker » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

seibelj wrote: post #228

DenisM wrote: post #219

The Los Angelos teachers added a few other requests [1]. The introduction starts with: [...] LAUSD educators clearly want to get back into schools with their students, but the underlying question at every step must be: Given broader societal conditions, how do we open physical schools in a way that ensures that the benefit outweigh the risks [...] And then proceeds to the following recommendations, among many others:…

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…

For me, it's because private, religiously focused schools can receive federal aid to indoctrinate children into said religion, dictate what is taught to increase indoctrination rates, and skate oversight. They are welcome to do this on their own dime, but as soon as taxpayer funding is involved all religious specific focus and values must be dropped. The school must no longer refuse employment or punish students based on protected classes, benefits and other school affiliated programs must not have any religious based rules or policies, and the school must be transparent to audit and review to confirm students meet standards for their education including basic science and and history like the big bang and fact based origins of dinosaurs.

In this instance, it's a separation of church and state. You should not get a public dime if they do things like fire an LGBT teacher who had otherwise glowing reviews and successful students or refuse to teach basic science and history.

But the arguments against charter schools as a suck for public dollars as well as the way voucher programs can be abused (with support by the present Secretary of education, someone who has investments and connections to charter programs) is another huge issue.

It's not that the left opposes education, it's that they want actual education in schools. It's not that we shouldn't spend the money to improve education, it's that we need to invest in programs and schools that meet federal guidelines and respect federal law and constitutional rights.

And for me it's because the first amendment should guarantee freedom of and FROM religion. If the best school in town is the religious charter school my property taxes are supporting, we have conflicts.

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

#452

Post by bshoemaker » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:53 PM UTC

RestlessMind wrote: post #394

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…

> Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable. Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes. > ... good leadership ... but we chose someone who is committed to division, ... I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a…

This is not true; a) more rural states have a much easier time with covid and b) blue states started off being hit the hardest, but red states are now catching up because their governors are incompetent

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

#453

Post by core-questions » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #333

MattGaiser wrote: post #289

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 car…

Even for parents like myself that are really, really trying to make it work, it's a nonstarter. I have a 7 year old, and his computer is right next to mine where I am working remote, and I can supervise, except I'm in meetings often and it's hard to keep him on track. There's no peer pressure from other students to behave, the teacher has poor equipment and is barely intelligible sometimes, and there's every incentive to just goof off if I am not on top of him in a ridiculous way that would never have been the case in conventional schooling or even in traditional homeschooling.

I'm distracted and my productivity suffers also.

> Another is to design a remote learning system that actually works

I don't know what that would look like, because at the end of the day it'll just be a TV yelling at you, and kids will tune out. There's lots of interactive educational material, but unfortunately it's either way too much "fun and games" and not deep enough, or it's just boring worksheets slapped on a screen.

The teachers are honestly trying their best with the materials they have, but it doesn't work, and it seems like really we're stuck between wasting formative years, or risking that we get sick with a disease which honestly has a pretty low mortality rate in otherwise healthy people. I hate the decision, I hate the dichotomy, I wish there was another option, but I don't see it.

And this is with a private school outside of America; so I can only imagine how it would be in a more impoverished American inner-city setup, or how it is for people who can't work remote.

I think they have to go back and we just have to accept the health risk. I hate that this is where I've landed.

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

#454

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

dragonwriter wrote: post #371

pdonis wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I responded to a similar point by not2b downthread. The following are some additional points I didn't make there. To some extent the inequity you describe can be corrected by forcing particular methods for apportionment that can better prevent gerrymandering, and by increasing the size of the House to reduce the difference between the populations of the least and most populous districts. A certain amount of inequity…

> Another point to make is that the main problem with the Senate and the House has nothing to do with the inequity you describe: it is the simple fact that Congress has very low approval ratings but very high incumbent reelection rates. That means members of Congress are effectively never held accountable for bad policy decisions. Wrong. Individual members of Congress tend to have high (often overwhelming) approval i…

[deleted]

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

#455

Post by dhosek » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:54 PM UTC

chosenbreed37 wrote: post #401

thephyber wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want an increase in mask supply, you have to either allow the pricing mechanism to do its job, or force people to make masks. Those aren't the only options. Some mask manufacturers could scale up manufacturing as long as they had a medium/long term contract to make the investment worth it. The current administration keeps blaming the previous one for drawing down on the federal PPP supply without replenishin…

Curious. Is there anything stopping individual states from doing this? Surely a federal system should enable individual states to act independently to some extent. They must have their own budgets and are to determine how resources are allocated. No?

States are resource constrained in ways that the federal government is not. Most, if not all, local governments are required to balance their budgets on an annual basis. Conservative politicians insist on tax cuts during economic boom times that prevent these governments from being able to withstand downturns without dramatic cuts in services (which is the real end goal of the conservatives).

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

#456

Post by Kapura » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

treis wrote: post #405

Kapura wrote: post #380

Earlier quoted context omitted.

ok thank you for explaining my family's lived experience to me, the person whose family's lived experience it is. Maybe later you could swing by and tell me if I'm finding the sun hot or not.

Your family's lived experience doesn't change the statistics.

Ah, statistics. A notoriously accurate and complete way of understanding how other people live.

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

#457

Post by msluyter » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

chosenbreed37 wrote: post #401

thephyber wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want an increase in mask supply, you have to either allow the pricing mechanism to do its job, or force people to make masks. Those aren't the only options. Some mask manufacturers could scale up manufacturing as long as they had a medium/long term contract to make the investment worth it. The current administration keeps blaming the previous one for drawing down on the federal PPP supply without replenishin…

Curious. Is there anything stopping individual states from doing this? Surely a federal system should enable individual states to act independently to some extent. They must have their own budgets and are to determine how resources are allocated. No?

IIRC, states are mandated against running deficits, and their budgets are set 1-2 years in advance (eg, Texas, whose legislature sets the budget every 2 years), which limits their maneuverability in this regard. Also, states don't have the equivalent resources and bargaining power of the federal government.

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

#458

Post by jimbokun » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

RestlessMind wrote: post #394

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…

> Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable. Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes. > ... good leadership ... but we chose someone who is committed to division, ... I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a…

> I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a simple website for his signature initiative[1]. The problem is much deeper.

This strikes me as a pretty passive-aggressive argument style.

Who, in your opinion, is the better leader? Which of Obama or Trump do you think would handle this pandemic better?

You are picking out one mistake, and kind-of-sort-of implying that makes them both the same, except you don't have the courage to directly state that. If you have a point to make, make it.

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

#459

Post by mynameisvlad » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

greesil wrote: post #444

mynameisvlad wrote: post #392

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this even a discussion we're having? Yes, literally anybody would have had a better response than what we got. Just looking at the current state of the US vs practically any other country in the world shows how cripplingly bad the response has been from the current administration. Sometimes, I really hate the people in this country.

I can take a guess. People consume different information sources, and have different ideologies. So, they may arrive at different conclusions than you. I suspect this is more heavily on the ideology side because it's hard to deny the body count.

It was more of a rhetorical question. I know why it's happening, it's just ridiculous and infuriating that it is happening.

Anyone who comes in with good faith and actually objectively looks at the statistics and response can't possibly come to a different conclusion. The problem comes down to the "good faith" and "objective" parts of that sentence.

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

#460

Post by fancyfish » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 8:55 PM UTC

_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…

This. Think of the marshmallow study where long-term planning kids turned out richer than the short-term minded ones. We need to push back against the Idiocracy mindset.

It is our prerogative as the less reckless to breed and propagate our genes, and teach our culture to our young. As you mentioned, the force of nature is against that, so we need campaigns, perhaps by the State, for the “careful thinkers” to breed and hold control over culture.