Understand your points and I appreciate the back and forth.
Here is my question: what makes education so special? There is no other industry pushing back as hard as the education industry. And do you know why that might be? Because they have "think of the children" as their bargaining chip. It's a chess match because all the pieces are there.
Retail employees haven't threatened to quit in masses. Airline employees. Meat packing employees. Contractors/laborers. Appliance repair people who go INTO peoples homes. Delivery people. Bankers. Hair stylists, grocery store employees, and the rest of America that goes to work.
It's only education. Because everything has to be a God damn fight with education because.....well I don't precisely know other than it's political.
Again, if Americans enjoy where they live and hope to have a continued educated, functioning, healthy, strong, stimulated, involved populace in the near future it would be for everyone's benefit to get the future generations back to school. Back to learning. Back to playing sports and band and acting in theaters. Getting into fights and sitting in the principals office. Having detention. Going on field trips.
This is what helps children, develop into functioning adults.
It is truly amazing to me some (not you necessarily) have to have such a simple concept explained to them. But hey, don't take it from me. Take it from real childhood development professionals. All of whom unanimously advocate for in person school and activities.
I appreciate it too!
I get that most all childhood development professionals say that kids should be in school learning. But it seems like they (and it's their role) come at it from the perspectives of the kids, not the teachers, administrators, and support staff who have to also be in the school, and who may be at higher risk of getting covid, and having worse symptoms. I'm sure that there are a lot of safeguards that can be take, but depending on the kids, getting the students to consistently go along with them could be challenging.
One issue I do have is the parents. Parents are notorious for sending their kids to school when they're sick - masking fevers with aspirin, etc. If there was a way to ensure that parents wouldn't send their kids to school sick, it'd be safer, but parents aren't like that. Parents want those kids out of the house!
Your first question is a good one. I'm not involved in education, except for having a kid in high school. So all I've got is my perspective. I guess I wonder why it is that teachers are put in such an important role, which requires advanced education and training, and then treat them like blue collar workers? Look at that list that you wrote -they're all low level workers. I guess not "bankers", but here locally, the only people in the bank are tellers, and some of the banks are drive thru only for now.
But if you're going to lump teachers in with meat packers and grocery store workers, doesn't it diminish their importance and their professionalism? When covid started my company sent us all home to work, and there's no telling when we're going to be allowed back - I'm hearing it'll be summer '21. Most of the "white collar" workers here are in the same boat. So if teachers are going to be respected as college-educated professionals who are in fact responsible for developing future leaders, shouldn't they be treated with as much respect as other professionals? Doctors and nurses have a level of health risk (and accompanying safeguards) inherent in their roles. Teachers haven't historically had that.
If teachers are now going to be told that they have to do the same job, for the same money, but take on a whole new level of health risk, isn't it reasonable to expect them to push back against that? It's like if you told me that I have to go back to the office, and there's a 1 in 1000 chance that I'm going to be shot and seriously injured (if not die), then I'm not going to be thrilled with that. I'm going to look for ways to reduce my risk, or to be paid better for accepting the new risk.
I don't know what the right answer is, but I think there could be significant pushback to telling all the teachers that they have to go report back to work at the schools, while there's still a bunch of covid going around. If there's not, then what did the teachers ever bother unionizing for - if not for a huge health and safety issue like this? Seems like that is supposed to be the whole point of the union - to protect the workers.