There was a post on a friend’s social media feed, quite long & well written, but the basic question was this:
“Are we willing to kill our kids’ teachers?”
The basics are this: without people to run the gears of the economy, things will grind to a halt and with that, the house of cards that everyone pretends is the greatest human invention ever will collapse. Perhaps only partway. Perhaps all the way. Hard to tell.
Some of these people have kids.
How do you get the kids out of the house when child labor isn’t an option?
Well… force them to go to school.
For the record, I’m an educational advocate. I love learning. However, learning to love learning in school is an accidental side effect, not a result of the one-size-fits-all madness that the system seems to love to embrace.
Never has this been clearer with the pandemic. There are entire states that desperately want kids to go back to school because kids have to learn. Kids have to learn what? That germs are real and it will kill little Susy just as happily as Teacher Jeremy?
Or, if you don’t want to be that dramatic, “only” infect the teachers, kill their spouses or parents or traumatize them. Is our kids discomfort at not being educated worth their life?
I devoted a considerable amount of time to the institutions that my family attended. These teachers, these staff… I know them personally.
I want options too and I see people suffering, but suffering is different that watching people that I love, teachers and staff that I spent 15 years with going through something they do. not. deserve. in ANY form.