Kids are hardwired to love learning, they will never stop asking questions and exploring the world.

Schools quash that curious spirit. They put kids in a boring, prison-like, highly regimented environment that seeks to teach discipline and obedience to the status quo. Don't think, accept your role in the capitalist machine. If you are bullied, no one will help you, but if you fail to complete work you will be punished. Most of all, get used to not owning most of your time.

Take note of this and try to rekindle your child-like curiousity and love of learning. Ask yourself, do you still have questions about the universe you forgot to ask as a child? Read about the planets, the stars, microbes, machines. But most importantly, do it at your own pace and do it because you still have questions. Not to pass some test, but for you.

    • effervescent [they/them]
      ·
      3 years ago

      I know a lot of socialist teachers and none of them have a history of domestic violence. If my partner called me a cop I might be ready to throw down though

      • FidelCashflow [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        If your partner said something to you and you thought about throwing hands you might have same potential in law enforcement after all

            • effervescent [they/them]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Same. Let me know when the revolution comes and you start executing people for teaching kids how to read

              • FidelCashflow [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Have you seen America's literacy rate? Don't pin your pride on that claim.

                • effervescent [they/them]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  I’m well aware of the literacy rate. I’m fighting it every fucking day. I do reading intervention. It is my only subject and I work at it 10 hours a day. And I also have union duties and do org work on top of that. It’s not my fault that kids come into 2nd grade with more severe trauma than the average adult. It’s not my fault that a bunch of racist housing policies made my district dirt poor or that 10% of my students are housing unstable. But I have hard data to prove that what I do works.

                  Kids come in functionally illiterate and are often caught up to their peers by the end of the intervention. I chose to work in a poorer district with higher need kids for lower pay because their union is more radical and because I have more leeway here to not propagandize children. Guess that’s equivalent to beating unarmed protestors or shooting black kids dead in the street daily though.

                  • FidelCashflow [he/him]
                    ·
                    3 years ago

                    Nah, you get a pass. However you are unuseually dedicated and unuseually good.

                    Back in the school district I worked in we didn't have a lot of people like you and it showed. If we had had more like you, I might have followed through with finishing my education as a young man.

                    • effervescent [they/them]
                      ·
                      3 years ago

                      Yeah some districts are bootlicker central. There were several points where that sort of deference to the bureaucracy made me consider swapping lanes. There’s a sweet spot for me where a district isn’t performing so poorly that it’s about to be taken over by the state but it’s underserved enough that it’s kind of an “emperor is far away” situation

        • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          I read your comment on my way to school, in the midst of a massive outbreak, where more than half the staff and students are out, as the city government continues to feed my body into the gears of the economy to lubricate them with my blood. And I get to read you calling me a cop. Unironically go fuck yourself

          • effervescent [they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Meat grinder gang. What’s the over under on us staying open through the entire Omicron wave?

              • effervescent [they/them]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Mine seems to be hiding behind the fact that a lot of the kids out are ones where unexplained absences are already a thing

          • FidelCashflow [he/him]
            ·
            3 years ago

            In the midst of a massive outbreak the members of your profession have not even considered a strike to save thr lives of their charges, the lives of the famies involved or even the their very own.

            You are a good one, in a barrel of bad ones.

              • FidelCashflow [he/him]
                ·
                3 years ago

                Fair. However they have one of the last few good unions and they are are honor bound to set a positive moral example for thr future generations.

                If anyone vould be doing it, it's them. Infact, many of them have been doing it and it has been working. However most of the professon are not living up to the samdard

                • PM_ME_YOUR_FOUCAULTS [he/him, they/them]
                  ·
                  3 years ago

                  IDK what you're talking about. A lot of teachers don't have unions. I do, but it's terrible. And frankly you have no idea what kind of organizing goes on. When COVID started we forced the schools to shut down with wildcat sick outs that the progressive caucus I'm a member of helped organize. I organized my entire chapter from scratch to get them strike ready a year ago, and then our leadership sold us out.

                  Teachers are workers, full stop. And like most workers they are poorly organized if organized at all. Their conditions match the conditions of other workers in this country. We're not cops just because they aren't doing what you (and I) would like them to do.

            • effervescent [they/them]
              ·
              3 years ago

              Don’t come in here criticizing teacher’s unions if you don’t even follow their activity. There have been unions all over the country getting classes to go remote by threatening strikes. Many of them in environments where public employees striking is illegal. My union is currently negotiating something similar and there are rumors of a sickout if they don’t follow through.

      • FidelCashflow [he/him]
        ·
        3 years ago

        Gonna dedicate my life to getting underpaid to teach government propaganda to children. Couldn't be me cause I had a breakdown and dropped out of early childhood education courses when I realized the grim truth

        • effervescent [they/them]
          ·
          3 years ago

          It really is disturbing how much of early childhood ed is just behavior management. They barely emphasize it in college, but going into the field you sink or swim based on your classroom management skills. Kindergarten teachers terrify me. You shouldn’t be able to take a 5 year old and train them to sit at a desk for extended periods of time.

          That said, I’m a reading teacher and I refuse to read propaganda books. Critical literacy and culturally responsive pedagogy are where it’s at. The representation in my classroom library reflects the population of the school I’m working in and I’m always happy to find a book that a kid can see themselves in. Covid has absolutely fucked these kids over and any chance I have to help them enjoy reading I will take it

          • effervescent [they/them]
            ·
            3 years ago

            Gotcha yeah that checks out. However I do think that revolutions are born hiding within the cracks of a system and schools have a lot more leftists than one would expect (especially with how mask-off the chud teachers are allowed to be). There was that post yesterday by a journalist saying that a lot of leftists work in mainstream publications and just get their more radical bits edited away as well. Our self-visibility as a group isn’t great