Sources
A reply...
[The teacher] stat was from before the 21/22 school year started. Now that we're back, between the kids definitely not being alright and tik tok challenges, what will the stat be at the end of the year?
For teachers, this is the endgame when you make it illegal to strike. They've taken away the means for teachers to have their grievances addressed and keep treating them worse. At some point the capitalist advice of "if you don't like your job then quit" will get taken.
The situation is even worse for science/math teachers. A halfway competent high school science/math teacher can get a pretty good job in a lab or in software. Teachers in general choose that career path because they have a passion for education, but that passion can only compensate for so much bullshit until they'll choose an easier and better paying career path. This year especially, students have been less engaged than ever, and the teachers are teaching less than ever as school admin scrambles to find staffed classrooms they can shove students into. Why would somebody stay if they didn't have to?
The future is extremely grim for education in the US.
easier and better paying career path
Hell, I think they'd appreciate just a minimally safe environment
There's so many ifs between now and then that it's hard to say what things will look like at the end of 2022. Assuming though that, after Omicron, there continue to be variants that spread in the population and somewhat bypass herd immunity and things are generally pretty bad but not quite as fundamentally dire as they are now... I could see 20, maybe 30% of teachers actually leaving (and not just expressing major dissatisfaction), but the overall impact will be obscured because they'll be able to bring in volunteer teachers. This will damage an entire generation of students and their learning, but because there will be people in seats regardless of their skill at the profession, the media won't ring any alarm bells in a month or two. A few articles here and there but it'll be absorbed into the general din of "Somebody needs to do something about this!" without anything being done.
Nursing is different, as anything more advanced than basic first aid and CPR isn't something you can bullshit away and pretend you're doing - if you don't have actual nurses, people will start dying in larger numbers. A student not receiving their proper education is something that takes a while to have an effect - but a corpse is a corpse. 20% of nurses have quit, and I could see that doubling before the end of the year, though I'd be very surprised even for hellstate America for it to breach 50%. Only if the variants get more severe but retain their contagiousness with no change in CDC guidelines.
2030 Balkanization here we come. You can quote me on this, I don't see how the US lasts another decade at this rate.
I think American balkanisation will look less like Yugoslavia and more like the Holy Roman Empire. It will not be a sudden rupture but the gradual realisation among states that they can do as they please.
There will still be an emperor, a president, in Washington and some idea of belonging to the same nation but the central government will be powerless to either help states or to force them to follow orders and the president's role will be that of a mediator between essentially independent states, not that of leader of a unified nation. To make up for the lack of a working central government states will ally with eachother in a complex patchwork of alliances and treaties.
We're getting that megaregions map in everything but actual written law. No formal secession, no states seizing states through warfare; just the major local economies consolidating the smaller ones on their periphery as things like federal jurisdiction and state lines become effectively meaningless.
a mediator between essentially independent states, not that of leader of a unified nation
It sounds more like the EU when you put it that way
Nursing is different
Absolutely. I don't know a ton about the profession, but I have a cousin who's a nurse. She was a great student in college and still got waitlisted a year to get into a good nursing program. When she finally did and finished, she ended up being in college for nearly 5.5 years. It's not an easy profession.
they’ll be able to bring in volunteer teachers.
I work in a school, I've never heard of volunteer teachers. There's nobody who will do this job for free lmao, the system has been in slow collapse for a while. Consider that for a new teacher to get their credential, they generally have to work a whole semester without pay as part of "student teaching." While this can be very valuable experience, teachers are usually paying tuition and rent with no income. Covid is only heightening this contradiction.
Something like this: https://www.npr.org/2022/01/12/1072372489/texas-schools-ask-parents-to-fill-in-as-substitute-teachers
Lmao Texas has the sheriff mentality where every able bodied white man can be deputized.
HERE’S MY WIFE DR JILL BIDEN TO TALK SOME SHIT ABOUT TEACHING SO SUBURBAN VOTERS THINK I CARE ABOUT CHILDREN IN A WAY THAT IS SOCIALLY ACCEPTABLE :biden-harbinger:
His staff and his wife were totally panicked. He said that after he started bouncing a child on his knee, he couldn't stop, and he looked like he might actually orgasm.
The fact that this isn't on the front page every day is solid proof of the power of propaganda.
Watch em find a way to make it illegal to quit. Like they start contracting people in with legal fines if they don't finish their term or whatever.
Hell with the national guard getting involved maybe it'll just be straight up conscription
Vancouver tried that shit with sanitation workers after they struck. It didn't go well.
Hell with the national guard getting involved maybe it’ll just be straight up conscription
Some combo of this, or military service for loan relief, with the "service" being working as a fry cook at a small business or being an orderly asked to do nurse's work at a hospital or nursing home.
They'll somehow find a way to make it illegal for nurses to quit and draft them into keep working. Moral blame for the nurse shortage will be put on the nurses, not at hospital administrators who fail to provide attractive pay and working conditions.
Also - scab nurses will become normalized. Dem consultants will have to create a lib-friendly term for scab nurses. How about "independent nurses" short for independent contractor nurses?
Staff nurses have a surprising amount of solidarity with scab nurses.
Last year the kids stole the bathroom sinks. This year they’ll kidnap the janitors.
Devious licks but it’s car bombing elected officials and the school janitors
Correction: the janitors help the kids school bomb elected officials.
Wait is that a bit or did they somehow manage to remove sinks from the walls and plumbing?
I’m a teacher rn. It is incredibly depressing, the only positive I can find at this point is using as a point to start gently radicalizing my students (who are early elementary) that other better systems exist.
They are amazed there are countries with little to no covid. It breaks my heart that they have to live in this FUCKED UP country.
At a certain point I have no idea wtf I am preparing them for, I have to hope it is revolution but part of me worries it will be barbarism.
