Radical Recommendation From a Former Teacher: Keep Schools Permanently Virtual
It’s time to end the debate once and for all. There is only one way to save your children from infection and violence.
I’m going to ask you for a favor. I’m going to ask you to read all the way to the end before commenting.
Thank you.
Don’t ever reopen our schools as we’ve known them.
It’s time for a real answer to the scourge of infection and violence that has so impacted our children.
That answer is called “progress.”
First, I dismiss anyone’s “civil liberties” in this equation, primarily because those who complain about wearing masks today clearly do not understand what civil liberties are.
I share those same liberties. We all do. But we’ve scarcely complained or even spoken about them before. At least not to this degree. Most of us began wearing our civil liberties on our sleeves only during the era of Trump.
Because it became an “in-thing” to do.
For those of you to whom this applies, do you also drive drunk because it’s your civil liberty? Do you shoot down your enemies because it’s within your right?
I posted this on Facebook yesterday, which sarcastically elucidates my perspective on the matter:
Newsflash: Your civil liberties are not the same as your civil rights. I march for civil rights. I write consistently about civil rights. I’m not here to educate you, but I encourage you to look up the difference. I also encourage you to look up my own work on the matter while you’re at it.
But, in brief, here’s a quick definition, courtesy of Wikipedia: Civil liberties are guarantees and freedoms that liberal governments commit not to abridge, either by legislation or judicial interpretation, without due process.
It is not an excuse for anarchy, nor a rationale for selfishly not wearing a face mask.
Onward.
I was a special education teacher for 10 years. I was assaulted once by a student — a member of a gang — and I pressed charges. It was a sad day as he and I had bonded, but I felt as though I needed to teach him a lesson. Some of that story can be found here:
As to Daniel, the student pictured in the above story, he actually saved my ass that day … only to die a few years later by police in a shootout.
He shot first, having returned to his world of drugs and crime.
I’ve seen other teachers — and students — abused. Seen, not heard. And I reported them all. A few students committed suicide.
I had tough kids. Cutters, neo-Nazis like Daniel, those who came to school with knives and threatened to take out classmates and teachers.
Note: My population was atypical. I worked primarily with severely disturbed kids and adults. However, many of those who have shot up schools over the past several years were not in special ed programs. Some were.
Most though, per reports, were not.
They were the sons and daughters of parents who fell short.
It’s now time to hold parents up to account.
We are not ready to open schools. That’s a definitive statement. There is already a lack of budget for supplies, as Al Sharpton mentioned on a recent MSNBC report. If a teacher gets sick, what then? Will kids be controlled enough to wear masks during recess, lunch, etc?
Would you work in a petrie dish?
I wouldn’t.
It’s such a ridiculous consideration and I can fill pages with reasons why schools should remain shut down.
It’s time for schools to morph and go entirely and permanently virtual, or otherwise parents should homeschool their children.
Colleges must become virtual as well.
Those are the only choices that make any sense due to our pandemic era, and the lasting economic and social changes we will experience because of it.
If a vaccine for our novel coronavirus is found tomorrow, you know what will happen?
Nothing, as many of those still engaged in Trumpism will continue to cite their civil liberties and choose not to be vaccinated.
We’re done. Schools are finished. Virtual education and homeschooling are the only options.
We’ve lost a key battle of our current culture war, as considerably more than one person out there still refuses to wear a mask.
But, as a result, both viral and school shooting issues are now solved.
Socialization skills will from here forward be learned online and, should parents be smart about it, within highly-supervised outside activity with other students.
And please don’t tell me, “Well, if I can work in an office then I can still send my kids to school.”
No, you cannot. There are neither enough controls, nor human discipline, nor job security for teachers who are used to losing a week or two during the year catching the flu anyway from runny-nosed and coughing students.
As years pass, we lose things.
I vote not to lose our kids — our future — who hopefully will do a better job managing this globe than we did.
Anyone with me?
Those losses would be the height of needlessly tragic … unlike others we thought would be calamitous.
Once we listened to radio exclusively for our entertainment. There was no TV, and movies were still in their infancy. Once there was no telephone. We’ve since lost phone cords. I’d wear a leisure suit tomorrow but it may hurt my writing prospects. I miss mood rings too. Sure you can still find both in novelty stores, but why bother? People used to say, “Movies will never survive television.” They were wrong there. But they also used to say, “The phone will kill the telegram service.”
Correctamundo.
The logistics of virtual schools will be figured out too, and can and will one day become a legitimate way of life.
One day.
Kids being born in this era would know no other way, so technically they’d miss nothing.
And their odds of remaining illness-free or alive is exponentially increased.
To punctuate these comments, I’m going to double-up on something I mentioned a moment ago. Despite Trump wearing a mask while visiting a hospital as I write this, his loyalists have already gone too far down a path.
There will not be a “cure” for Covid-19 in our lifetime, thanks to the civil liberties crowd.
I for one am not interested in reopening schools and betting the lives of anyone’s children, even the cult-crowd, at the favor of a carny president and his cockamamie politics.
In conclusion …
I asked you a favor when I started this piece. I asked you to read to the end.
Here’s my endpoint: If we cannot get a group of selfish men and women to educate themselves about the social limitation of their civil liberties and put on face masks today, they most certainly will prevent a Covid cure tomorrow. In that event, the science fiction outcome I had written above may well come true.
Though 100% virtual schools would certainly completely eliminate school shootings and a degree of Covid spread, if we lose the culture war today — over a piece of cloth — we just may need to get used to the thought.
This is how far we’ve come.
The irony is intended.
Thank you for reading.
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