During my teacher career I was very active in my union. I had begun my career teaching in a Catholic college prep high school from which, as an “at will” employee, I was sacrificed for a graduate from a seminary who would not require a salary, although his very soon to be needed lay replacement did, by a principal who inadvertently gave salient advice even as his intention was to be mean spirited by scoffing, “Too bad you don’t have a union,” when me informed me of that.

This union involvement had me advocating for educational changes in general and my classes specifically as a teacher, and, even as I was negotiating and maintaining respect for hours, wages, and conditions of employment when negotiating a contract or processing a grievance of a teacher for a contract violation, I was also a doing the same for students who would be in a teacher’s condition of employment. Some contracts gave those in the classrooms with the students, the teachers who saw active education on a daily basis and knew the children, some say in curriculum and methodology.

In my early years those who had been the school systems since after the Second World War were getting on in years and, as happens with age and experience, were not quick, and, sadly, were often reluctant to adopt new ways and new ideas.

To them, my Special Education students with emotional needs should still have been subject to being expelled from school because of bad or unsocial behavior.

There were times during negotiations for contracts, or when a simple proposal was advanced when the administration allow or accept something because their lack of knowledge in an area would be exposed if a proposal for something about which they could explain little were to be set in motion and having nothing of substance to present from their side that would seem a legitimate reason to reject a proposal, they would simply turn it down claiming to have done so either “for the sake of the children”, or, “We are (thinking of, or protecting) the children”, implying that what teachers wanted was harmful and, therefore, had to be opposed.

I still have the newspaper clippings of the battle from the mists of time when I proposed I establish a form of Sheltered Workshop in my Special Education classroom to help connect academics to the real world and teach some skills like keeping a check book, managing time, and putting forth the time and effort that influences you take home check. Daily classwork had to be completed successfully in order to go to the work area after lunch, while unfinished work had to be finished and undone work done before those students could report. One of the reasons to support its denial was that the administrator in charge of educational programs who actually could not or would not grasp the usefulness of it, in spite of a person who ran the program for the Veterans’ Administration on which my idea was based coming to the administrator’s office and explaining it in details presenting all the legalities that would allow such a program, was that he was thinking of the welfare of the children.

This “thinking of the children” in all its verbal guises is meant to stop all discussion as, rather than having to deal with the proposal, implying the other side of the table has bad intentions changes the conversation from the subject to making the deliverers of the message the message that must be dealt with.

I heard “Think of the children” and “We are simply protecting the children” when advocating that it be made clear in school policies that Gay students needed protection from bullying, harassment, and discrimination, as the school district refused to do that as if their protection was a threat to the other students.

Around 2003, twenty years ago now, there was a book banning attempt in Oklahoma City promoted by a very “christian” state representative who claimed that books presenting Gay people in any good light was a danger to the children who must be protected.

It is the same argument used now for book banning.

Reasonable gun laws are prevented because the American people have the right to protect their families, their children, from anyone who might seek to do harm them in the home they have a right to protect which justifies arsenal of personal weapons. However, there seems to be no concern about the safety of these same children when they go to the supermarket, the movie theater, or school.

I suppose I could comb the internet to list the many examples I might find, but even now in current events with Drag shows, books about non-white heterosexuals being banned, curriculum controlled by those who need the secrets kept that way, advocating for the return to segregation, any number of topics with adherents on both sides, the posited reason for denial of rights and reality is for the protection of children, a protection only they can supply since they are the ones promoting the dust bunny under the bed as a life threatening monster waiting for the kid to get and bed and the lights to go out.

If you really want to keep the kids safe, protect them from those who, while letting them die in school, use them as the excuse to do nothing in this and other areas.

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