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Stop Treating Teachers Like Your (Underpaid) Babysitters
Our educators deserve a raise and a compassion, not condemnation, as they try to educate American children in a pandemic
Earlier this month, a millionaire cable news host offered a message to teachers afraid of their classrooms being a deathtrap in an ongoing plague.
“If you don’t want to teach, don’t teach,” MSNBC’s Joe Scarborough shouted on Morning Joe. “Quit. Just stay at home and stop teaching children, okay? … You are either ignorant when it comes to science or you just don’t want to be in classes.”
Scarborough was responding to Chicago teachers voting to switch to remote learning amid the Omicron surge. Scarborough, a former Republican Congressman, no longer identifies as a member of the GOP, but it’s always going to be easy to rile up a conservative when the actions of unions are up for debate. That said, his sentiment was echoed across media outlets and social media by people of all political spectrums. Unsurprisingly, what linked them was their class bubble and the heightened American entitlement that comes along with living solely inside it.
Scarborough and those who think like this are not wrong in highlighting that school can be conducted safely in this pandemic. He is not wrong to…
