A Morality Tale With A Happy Ending

Patrick Reagan responded to Our Rulers Ruin the Three R’s with a

story about being forced into the precarious position of masking up on the job.

Up until very recently, I was very happily employed as an elementary teacher at a private Montessori school in [Texas]. Two weeks ago during staff orientation (via Zoom), my colleagues and I spent three hours going over a ten page addendum to the handbook regarding procedures we were to follow regarding WuFlu. At the end, my director informed us that we would be required to wear face coverings due to municipal and state edicts.

I was hoping to get away with donning a face shield. I bought one on Amazon for $15 and it had worked pretty well for me ever since Governor “Santa Anna” Abbott made face coverings mandatory at the end of June. It was a begrudging compromise to principle that I thought I could live with since it allowed me to emote, breath easy, and go about my daily life unmolested. Alas, I was in for a rude awakening.

My director decided to interpret the edicts as meaning that only snug-fitting cloth face masks were acceptable. I attempted to reason with her that this was an unnecessarily narrow view, to no avail. My last resort was submitting a conscientious/religious objection, as well as a medical necessity exemption. Both were summarily rebuffed, and I received a curt dismissal from my post.

At first, I was bewildered at it all. But I realized the situation had become completely untenable when, a few days before the school year started, my director decided to go well beyond any of the governmental edicts by requiring all children above the age of three to be face masked. When I heard this, I was glad to not be there anymore. I could not, in good conscience, participate in the systematic terror she was perpetuating on the children. My job was to teach them, not to scare them about something infinitesimal like WuFlu.

Shortly afterward, I received emails from two pairs of parents from my classroom. They were disappointed to hear how I had been treated, and with the way my director was acting. They informed me that they would be pulling their children out of that school, and wondered if I’d be interested in launching a learning pod. They told me I’d be a great role model for their children because I stood on principle and accepted the consequences with stoic poise. They are also of like mind and conscience because they both complimented me on my “Ron Paul rEVOLution” bumper sticker, the only one I have on my car.

This Saturday we’re all going to meet together to finalize all the details: contracts, calendars, curriculum, etc. Thankfully Texas is the best place to start a business and couldn’t be laxer when it comes to homeschooling. If all goes well, we’ll launch on Monday the 31st, which also happens to be the 150th birthday of Maria Montessori. It’s poignant because she went toe-to-toe with “Il Duce” about his edict that Italian children wear the Fascist uniform to her schools; she told him exactly where he could stick his pieces of cloth. Though he shut her down shortly thereafter and she went into exile in the Netherlands, she was right to resist the tyranny of her day, just as we are right to resist the tyranny facing us today.

To others in a similar predicament, I reiterate the old Latin proverb: fortune favors the bold. Private tutoring may prove to be just as lucrative as teaching at a school, perhaps more so once the cost of officious administrators is cut out of the equation. It’ll also be easier to nurture talent because more individual attention can be given over roughly the same amount of time, maybe even less. Though our present economic situation is dire, and uncertainty abounds, many parents are still willing to make investments in their children if they feel they’ll get their money’s worth. With the utter ridiculousness coming from regulated schools (public as well as private), it shouldn’t be a hard sell.

Heartening to see strength and virtue rewarded for a change!

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5:03 pm on August 29, 2020