Clay Jones for January 10, 2022

That being healthy is far worse than being sick.

Wait a minute. . .

Pretty much everybody hates unions in the abstract. Just like we hate big government in the abstract. Because they’re powerful and you can’t control their behavior. Except the people who benefit from them, of course.

Without teacher unions they would be getting a pittance of what they are getting now! They do a lot behind the scenes that the parents never see. They are vastly underpaid!

People that babysit your kids so that you can try to earn a living. Try finding a private sitter, and see how much that will cost you. Quit your crummy job and be a babysitter for a while. If you don’t brain one or two, you are a saint.

Well the fish and the dog don’t seem to care.

If many teachers get sick, the schools will close down and they won’t be able to teach remotely. We don’t have good choices here.

Ever met a child that liked going to bed on time? Ever met a child that liked eating any number of things that are better for them than candy or junk food? Ever met a child that likes to be seriously challenged to learn or to think about complicated things? Ever met a child that liked doing the things like washing their hands, keeping distant from their friends who might be sick, or wearing a mask that keeps them from catching a virus or from spreading it to someone that might die if they caught it? Those children are rare.

So are school districts that put anything they can think of before keeping on budget and meeting “testing standards” up to and including the health and welfare of their staff. They are no different from far too many other employers. And yet they are ultimately in charge of caring for millions of children. Teachers who work with and for the betterment of your children just might know what is better for them than administrators who don’t even know your child’s name.

And before some knee-jerk gets into it… Ever met a home schooled child that had no social behavior issues or dealing with new or unusual situations? Ever met a home schooled child that was truly open to new and unconventional ideas or ways of thinking? Those children are also far too rare.

Good teachers are worth their weight in gold. Remember this – your child’s life is in their hands, and not only their lives today but the future of their lives as well. You put them in their care. Let them be responsible. Listen to them.

—) One alternative to both in-class and on-line learning might prove easier yet more effective than both. I am surprised that no one has yet brought it forth. Consider this a Modest Proposal:

Previous experiments with planaria (flatworms) seem to show that memories can be transferred. Say that a group of worms has been conditioned to react reflexively to bright lights, or to navigate certain mazes. Those worms retain those memories and use them subsequently.

If one group of experienced worms is ground up and fed to second group of inexperienced worms, it appears that the second group has obtained the experience through chemical transfer alone.

The potential application to humans is obvious and very exciting. If the learning of various academic subjects could be transferred from teachers to students without classroom attendance, many present problems vanish: School building cost, teachers’ unions, government education bureaucracies, and so forth.

At first it might be difficult to find teachers willing to be ground up and fed to school children (mystery meat, indeed!). The donors for the first “teacher tacos” should volunteer as patriots. If not, their appropriate bodily fluids might still be legally obtained in something similar to eminent domain.

Although research and implementation of necessary procedures might initially cost a lot, spreadsheet analyses of future savings would likely sway the Department of Education and federal courts. Ordinary citizens could be enticed with cuts in taxes.

And of course, since the actual intellectualized ground meat would be scarce and messy, no doubt “professor pills” will emerge as easier to process, distribute, and ingest.

As far as I can see, this is a total “Win” proposal!

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2010/06/memory-transfer

The indoctrination done by the NEA and AFT quite often has the opposite effect intended.

Darn those teacher unions.. wanting.. nay, demanding; safe working conditions. Why can they not have the same values as.. say nurses, who put their own lives on the line to save others.

Workers unions are a powerful tool for protecting workers rights and increasing their benefits. In 1962, my mother, a 3rd grade teacher, was asked by the SCTA to have a one day sick-in to demand better wages for teachers. My mom and half the state’s teachers stayed out on a Monday. Their action so scared the legislature, fearing that their teachers might be following the example of teachers in NYC and Chicago, that they revamped the teacher pay scale. Since then, the pay scale, though not equal to the national average, is much better and continues to improve. All this happened because the teachers organized and were willing to stand up for fairness in remuneration.

But for abuse, self-serving, and despoiling , no group approaches what Big Corporations have done and continue to do. Pretty much 99% of everyone hates the harm Big Corporations inflict.

^^ KE has just revealed his actual identity!

This is not just a union issue. One of the high schools in my district had to go to remote learning simply because too many teachers and staff were sick and quarantined. More will likely follow.

We have to get rid of all unions or we’ll never have a decent fascist dictatorship.

A lot of other schools are going to remote learning, as the cases of Covid spiking from holiday gatherings from the previous month. With so many kids and teachers sick right now, remote learning is likely the best option for the next few weeks.

The most intelligent solution always was the hybrid model: part remote, part in-person. The interesting thing is how many companies discovered that working from home actually makes excellent sense. When I was a kid, and people would talk about flying cars and things, I always counterdicted them. To me, the future seemed to be office buildings with some kind of closed-circuit TV setups so people could work from home, and wouldn’t need much transportation at all, let alone flying cars. No, I didn’t foresee the internet, but I was right to some extent.

Clay, maybe you should work as a substitute teacher when there are staff shortages due to the highly infectious nature of Omicron.

My daughter was a teacher and like so many others before her she stopped teaching due to the lack of support from principals and other “leaders” plus dealing with parents that always believe their “little angels” no matter what. Then there are the pay and benefits issues, but according to the uninformed “teachers only work a few hours a day and have a three-month vacation”. because papers grade themselves, lesson plans appear by magic, classrooms come with supplies, etc.

BTW, there is talk about the possibility of some of the variants combining, e.g. Deltacron.