Expendable

 In end stage capitalism, the only lives that are important are the owners. The workers matter not. Someone keel over? Replace the slave and move on.

This is driven home by the push to re-open schools fully, before the real end of the pandemic is in sight. Teachers are expendable. Students are expendable. And with no differentiation between a cluster of kindergartners and big, crowded classes of 15-year-olds, there is bound to be a spike in the virus. A big one.

I read the New York Times every day, and for hours on Sunday. I know the works of all the prominent columnists. It was expected to see David Brooks slam teachers for not wanting to be in school. Not surprising. But when Nicholas Kristof offered his slam a week later, well. I thought he cared about low-paid working people.

Teaching is a profession that has a high percentage of women serving in the basic role of classroom instructor. Most men who enter the profession (including the new Secretary of Education) spend, at most, four years in a classroom while completing their principal certification. The men move up. Most of the long-time classroom teachers are women.

And that means that teachers are expected to martyr themselves for their students.

Don't believe me? Who "saves the day" by getting killed during school shootings? Some poor heroic teacher with a family at home.

Now teachers are being sent back into classrooms prematurely, when the end of the pandemic could otherwise be in sight. I teach high school. This will matter greatly to my students. They are 14 through 16. They and their families will be at risk.

To be fair to my district, they are offering parents the option to keep their kids at home. Those students will go to class virtually, as they have been doing since September. The difference is, teachers will now be instructing in-person classes and online classes simultaneously, while wearing a mask.

The teachers who are already doing this report that it is a massive, overwhelming fail.

My classroom has no air conditioning. In the last 4-5 weeks of school, the temperature can climb to 90 degrees and stay that way. It's global warming in miniature, like a car.

So picture me, Anne Johnson, a teacher of a certain age, working in a stifling hot classroom, in a mask for four hours without a bathroom break. Because that's what I'm looking at, comrades. I have a colleague who will have five hours straight. She's older than I am.

If David Brooks and Nicholas Kristof happened to ring my doorbell right now, I would quickly plug in the cattle prod and give them a good what's for. I never had much respect for Brooks, who is sanctimonious on a good day. But Kristof was one of my favorites. No more. The only way he could redeem himself at this point is to swap jobs with me for the next three months. Then we would see who knows what.