It’s Time to Take Seriously Teachers’ Refusal to Teach

In Democrat-run cities across America, teachers are demanding priority access to vaccines and refusing to return to their classrooms. The big fights are in Chicago, Montclair (New Jersey), and California, where the teachers are insisting on working only from home. Other school systems have only partial in-class teaching (e.g., Texas, Florida, and New York). Conservatives are reflexively pushing for a return to classroom teaching, but perhaps they should push in the other direction: Let’s end public schools entirely.

Before I go any further, I’d better apologize to those readers who are intelligent, dedicated teachers who do not think theirs is the hardest job in the world, that they receive the lowest salary of any employee ever, or that they are uniquely vulnerable to the Wuhan virus despite evidence that classrooms are not dangerous virus spreaders. This post is not about you. This post is about teachers who use their classrooms to indoctrinate the captive young people in their charge with leftist values.

Handmade Vintage Antiq... Check Amazon for Pricing. In Chicago, Mayor Lori Lightfoot is engaged in an epic battle with the teachers’ union to try to force them back into schools. So far, the teachers are winning with remote “learning” extended for at least two more days – and with the City having backed down from its threat to lock computer teaching access for those teachers who don’t return to their classrooms. In California, teachers’ unions are refusing to re-open schools until every single teacher is vaccinated.

The reason that teachers can take this stand is that they’re still getting their paychecks. While non-government workers are desperate to get back on the job so that they can buy food and shelter their families, teachers keep getting their paychecks even as students languish at home, isolated, alienated, depressed, and suicidal.

Conservatives rightly resent what’s happening. They support getting teachers back to work but I’d like to suggest a different approach: Shut down the public schools in these cities, give parents vouchers, and let the free market do its magic. Some parents might homeschool, some might do learning pods, some might reinvigorate parochial schools or other religious academies. The point is that parents would finally have a say in what their children are learning – and good teachers would find a broad variety of employment opportunities.

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