No matter where I had taught or what grade level, I always advised my students to learn as much as they could because people, like employers, want those who they can easily lead, and the less educated a person is the better for them. For them, the best employee is one that does not ask questions or make suggestions but will accept shiny objects without examining them.
Teaching for 38 years meant I have had the opportunity to see where students ended up, and barring the luck of having connections, those willing to learn did better as a group than those who did not and had better lives than the students who just were there.
The less they knew, the more they could be flim-flammed, and the worst thing for authority, be it school, work, society, government, is to have people smart enough to ask questions mainly because very often there are no acceptable answers, In order to have certain societal things work, those in charge need sheep not thinkers.
The sad thing is that certain sectors of the corporate and political world do not want an educated workforce because they cannot justify a lot of what they do and can continue doing if no one calls them on it.
Fox News has decided to become active participants in the dumbing down of America.
Teachers have enough to deal with already. Being public employees, there are segments of society, usually those who learn important things by reading comments on the web without reading the article they are related to, who not only know more about teaching than teachers do, but like to treat teachers like the “Help”.
“I pay your salary” is a common response when a parent does not like what a teacher is saying or doing, or finds the teacher has better justification for their teaching than the parent has to justify their complaint.
I once heard a very direct school secretary telling a parent over the phone,
“You might pay my salary, but I live in town too and contribute equally to it. So, we are even. Now let’s deal with the issue.”
And preferring the term “public servant” rather than “public employee” seems to give people the impression that teachers are to be subservient and answer to the public no matter how off base the public might be on a given issue.
Teachers are accused of offenses based solely on a child’s attempt to defend him or herself for bad behavior, “The teacher made me”, for not doing school work, “The teacher is mean to me”, holding the child to the same rules and requirement of all other students, “The teacher won’t let me do my work”, and the one that is guaranteed to get the parent to go after the teacher and not the kid, “The teacher GAVE me an F” to avoid tsking responsibility for not studying for the test
Heard them all.
Now Fox wants to add a new charge.
Teachers are pedophiles and enable child abuse.
Speaking to everyone but the teachers in the classroom, a common approach when it comes to education, Fox has decided that children as soon as the first grade are being taught about sex, homosexuality, bisexuality, sexual orientation, and gender identity.
They are supported in this by such statements as that made by the Florida Republican governor’ spokesperson who claimed anyone who opposed the “Don’t Say Gay” law is “probably” a “groomer”.
A groomer is a pedophile, pedophile enabler, or pedophile supporter, who prepares kids to accept the sex that is forced on them and teaches them how to be alluring so they will attract pedophiles.
In my advocacy during the early 2000s it was once claimed that the reason I wanted Gay kids protected in schools and have positive and real information made available to them just as was done with other groups of students, was so I would know who the Gay and vulnerable kids were so I could prey on them.
For this “reason” I had some parents remove their daughters from my classes to keep them safe from the Gay teacher, an action that showed their bigotry was a bit confused and uninformed.
Laura Ingraham, an educational expert and a scholar in the field of gender studies asked,
“When did our public schools, any schools, become what are essentially grooming centers for gender identity radicals?”
The answer should be reassuring for her.
They have not. So, never.
Fox news officially claims,
“Liberals are sexually grooming elementary students.”
Award winning American play-wright David Mamet was on Foxx recently. Mamet is known for such plays as American Buffalo. Glengarry Glen Ross, and The Postman Always Rings Twice. He is not a teacher, nor does he have training or experience in childhood development, education, or sexual studies, but he was not interviewed about literature or the theater, but public education, and he made the claim that male teachers, are “sexual predators.”
“Teachers are inclined, particularly men because men are predators, to pedophilia.”
He cited no studies or facts to back that up.
In my early years of teaching there was an attempt to get more males to enter elementary special education so young kids could see that school and education were not just a “girl thing” taught by mother figures but could see that education applied to all and men, father figures, could help those kids who needed one.
Tucker Carlson has called for men to engage in verbal or physical abuse of school teachers.
“I don’t understand where the men are. Like where are the dads? You know, some teachers pushing sex values on your third grader why don’t you go in and thrash the teacher? Like this is an agent of the government pushing someone else’s values on your kid about sex, like where’s the pushback?”
Foxx defended him with,
“CNN, Washington Post, Vice and more fret that Republicans are worried about child grooming, pedophilia.”
These claims are very dangerous for teachers as they have to deal with people constantly, and some have mental difficulties or poor anger management skills. are public figures and are easily identified in the community, and this often leads to informal parent/teacher conferences in those settings. Not all interactions with parents in stores, restaurants, and on the street are pleasant, and some have become physical attacks when they involve certain parents.
Not bragging but I have received two death threats on my phone’s answering machine and one typed and unsigned one delivered to my teacher mailbox without any stamp or address beyond my name meaning the threatener had been able to casually stroll through the school’s main office and into the teacher’s mailroom to leave it in my cubby hole or it was another employee making then treat.
No one who should have claimed to not know anything and the school’s police officer, claiming there was no way to trace the letter to its source without a return address or a postmark, refused to follow through.
I was also accused of promoting abortion in class because I had a poster of Edward Gorey’s Gashlycrumb Tinies in my classroom and my firing was called for by an irate parent, and this resulted in a meeting with administrator where the parent, in quoting the Bible at me, was silenced when she realized I knew the Bible as well as she and was able to counter each of her quotes with another that contradicted it.
Another time, a group of Baptist ministers went to the principal’s house to demand he end the course on Homosexuality and the person teaching it after they had told their congregations about the class and the teacher and encouraged them to go to the school and make those same demands.
There was no such class and no such teacher, but there was a lot of community anger based on a falsehood, and that’s when the death threats came.
If parents are not the type to cause a scene in public or face the teacher for clarification or just for a confrontation, the Florida law promotes parents suing their school districts because they believe or have been told that a teacher is “grooming”.
Fox is pushing this idea knowing full well that there are people out there who will act out about this outrage and teachers can be harmed.
To avoid the charges and threats that could lead to physical attacks, teachers will have to engage in self-censorship resulting in depriving students of a complete education because fear of career ending lawsuits could silence the teacher from dealing with certain topics.
The education of students is dependent on the craziest parent in the school now.
Apparently, with too many kids in the public school system taking teachers’ advice to become educated so they will not get fooled, Fox and its Republican congressional employees need a different way to keep the kids dumb.
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