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Nobody Asked Me: A Teacher’s Opinion on School Reopening
Everyone has an opinion about how and if schools should reopen for this coming school year. We’ve heard from the governors, the pediatricians, the parents, the education secretary, and the pr…mrsteacherlife.wordpress.com
The argument behind the article is basically "I'm scared and I don't want to go back until it's safe." Even assuming we can get to "safe" by having a vaccine that work and that gets quickly deployed, here's the flaw in the thinking: lot's of people are being asked to do things which aren't safe either-- health care workers, supermarket workers, meat packing plant workers, the police, your aircon guy, your plumber, your hair dresser. If it's not safe for a teacher to go back, it's not safe for them to go back either. The argument logically leads to a position that we need to shut down everything (except maybe workers who do COVID, food, water, electricity and the police) and not force workers who are scared to go back to work. Therefore, if you have plumbing that breaks down, you should be SOL, because it's selfish of you to ask a plumber to come to your house. This is essentially an argument for perpetual lockdown because of the maxim that used to be expressed "women and children first". Yes, children come before educators. They should come before we open gyms and bars. They come before your plumbing and airconditioning. They come before your protests. They should be at the head of the line, because they are the future and among the least vulnerable to the virus, but we are insisting on doing lasting, permanent and inequatable harm to them for the sake of older Americans. That's just a backwards way of thinking about it. If the schools aren't o.k., then none of it is....shut it all down and everyone use their best survival skills as the social order disintegrates around us after a year long lockdown....every person for themselves.