President Biden: The NEW one and only politics thread

Who among us reprobates would ever claim to be a good employee?

 

About public education...

In my very red county, teachers, social workers, and administrators have to walk this fine line between, "Don't you DARE try to instill any values that might be alien to us in our babies!" and "Do your job and raise our babies!" It's maddening and demoralizing.

I was a substitute teacher for three years as a side gig. (Yes, I'm one of those people who works multiple jobs and will cop to being mouthy for a peasant.) Because of my background with special needs populations and the classes listed on my transcript, I was short-listed for special ed and science classes.

Here's a sampler of some of the good, the bad, and the ugly:

1.) One of my regulars was a sweet lady who taught for nearly three decades. She had a master's degree in English literature and devoted years of her life to post-graduate education training for reluctant and non-neurotypical readers. The last few years before her retirement, they told her if she wanted to keep her job, she would have to teach science.

When I walked into her classroom/laboratory, the first thing I noticed was the walls were plastered with posters. No Periodic Table, no taxonomy charts, not even a picture of parts of a cell or the layers of earth. Nope. There were pictures from Star Trek, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, a couple of unicorns, The X-Files. As I stood taking in all in, some of her students entered the room and said, "Yeah. We know."

They were bright, polite, and smart. We're blessed with pretty good kids out here. They were struggling along with their teacher. I was called in to teach aeons and epochs, the Big Bang Theory, glaciations, and why we have such hairy relatives.

2.) Our school had two special ed teachers for whom I subbed. Their classes consisted of gifted kids in one period, followed by students with learning disabilities, followed by enrichment, followed by gifted... Nobody got enough attention.

3.) In another class, I had a pair who thought The Trouble With Angels was a student guide, not a bit of semi-autobiographical fiction. Attempts at being pains in the ass were met with apathy from me. I didn't have time for people who didn't want to learn. I was sent to assist a teacher where the Dynamic Duo sat smirking. I found out why while they were doing an exercise.

"So," the teacher said, "Do you have a degree?"

I told her it was in anthropology with side trips into folk studies.

"Oh," she said. "Do you believe in evolution?"

I explained it was not about belief, it was simply a subset of theories about species development and if it was true, it's ongoing.

She took a deep breath.

"So, uh, where do you go to church?"

I had to take a second. I saw Thing One and Thing Two smirking at each other. Yep, they either knew this teacher would do this or they planted the idea in her teeny brain.

"Do you think..." I almost stopped myself. Adults really should present a united front when dealing with kids. Then I thought, hellwiddit! "Do you think that is an appropriate question to ask a colleague in front of a classroom full of students?"

She stammered and pointed at Thing One and Thing Two, who were trying to slink down in their seats.

"No," I said, "Don't point to them. They're children. This is on you. We're going to discuss this further with Dr. (Name Redacted) after school."

The rest of the class was very quiet and Thing One and Thing Two couldn't get out of there fast enough. From then on, they begged to be somewhere else if I was subbing for their teachers.

4.) We discussed the meaning of native genius. Some kids got smirky and people stopped volunteering. After class, two boys asked if they could show me what they could do. One stepped through his arms while gripping a pencil in both hands. The other sang Muskrat Love in Russian.

My students knew what their houses and cars were worth. They knew who lived in the right subdivisions. What they weren't being taught was the simple human decency of really seeing each other as people. They're missing out. They will also be the parents who will scream bloody murder when their kids have to share a classroom with people of color, or "those thugs from THAT (actually my) neighborhood."



For a few years after that, I would get mail from the county dept of ed. "We need teachers!" Yes, you do. And you need to let the people who run your classrooms teach. You also need to rein in parents who have nothing better to do with their time than try to recapture their glory days as middle schoolers.

 

I agree.

Our directors are scared we're going to make ugly comments and such and have instructed us to be courteous toward our "new partners."

It was all I could do to keep from responding, "Our contempt and disgust is not directed toward our new partners. It's the reprobates who hired them whom we wish a slow and painful death."

 

There's been a lot of good points made here over the past couple days. Glad I had time to catch up.

Two things:
1. I used to be among the Wal-Mart haters. Sam Walton and his successors put downtown stores out of business, are vehemently anti-union, even would control the thermostat of every store from company HQ in Arkansas (supposedly).
Then I took a look at the newspapers I work(ed) for -- all of them have been family-owned, not corporations -- and the pay, work schedules and equipment they force on their employees. I realized Wal-Mart employees should be looking down at me, not vice versa.
And Wal-Mart has the best prices on Atkins bars; Costco doesn't carry 'em and Target's are more expensive. So there's that.

(I'm going to split this into two separate posts)

 

2. Are there any Marxists posting here? I guess it's tough to say because that term (along with others like "liberal," "feminist" and "Christian") has lost all of its original meaning. These descriptions have become labels used to damn people for their political views, whether they actually believe them or not.
Let's see ... in the 1990s, I was a member of the International Socialist Organization. Sold Socialist Worker newspapers outside factories and on street corners. Went to several KKK rallies across the Midwest to shout them down and confront them.
Getting married, having children and trying to balance all of that with full-time work takes a lot of the idealism away, but not all of it.
So maybe I'm your Marxist, Alma ... or was, at one time. I'm 49, and have entered the apathetic stage of however many years are left in my life. But I'm still supportive of the next generation of young people who believe things could be better than they are.

 

I don't understand why corporate America doesn't lead the fight to unhook insurance from employment

 

RIP Bo.

 

Insurance being tied to employment allows "corporate America" to more cheaply attract (and hold on to) labor.

Edit: Apologies for the (possibly interpreted as) snark.

 

I used to have a goldfish named Snark.

 

One more alumni of the Obama White House suspiciously dying!

 

People who accepted menial work in the past did so with the hope that their children would do better. I don't think that hope exists now. Would you empty wastebaskets today if you thought your children or grandchildren would be emptying wastebaskets for a living 30 years from now?

About the only case where that would seem appealing is if you were fleeing violent oppression/starvation in your native land. That's why my ancestors came here.

 

Barbecue night at the Obama house!!