At a rally on February 11 in El Paso, soon-to-be-indicted
Donald Trump Jr. drew cheers when he urged young conservatives to “bring it to
the school”. “You don’t have to be indoctrinated by those loser teachers that
are trying to sell you socialism from birth”.
Fortunately, we won’t have to listen to nonsense from him much
longer, since he is on the verge of being indicted by the Mueller investigation.
As of a month ago, he was saying goodbye to his friends because he KNOWS that
he will be indicted in the very near future.
In view of the fact that his dad is hostile to education in
general (why else would he nominate Betsy DeVos to be Secretary of Education?)
his comments are not a bit surprising, but they should serve as an ominous
warning to the rest of us.
In a stadium filled with people chanting, “USA,USA”, the son
of the president called for hostility towards teachers because of their
so-called political leanings, which is a message you would expect to hear in an
authoritarian regime, not at a rally for a U.S. president. As a matter of fact,
we are ALREADY living in a fascist state:
Hostility towards teachers, and also towards journalists , is
a world-wide problem.
53 journalists world-wide (including Jamal Khassogi) were
killed in 2018
In Germany, the right wing Alternative for Germany party has launched
a website where people can report “left wing” teachers.
In the Netherlands, right wing members of the parliament have
called on students to “out” their socialist teachers because they were
indoctrinating their students in “climate change propaganda”.
In Hungary, textbooks are censored to follow the government’s
nationalistic agenda.
In Turkey, president Erdogan has fired thousands of teachers.
In the Philippines, president Duterte is attacking teachers
unions.
Due to overcrowded classrooms, lack of professional
development, and low salaries, teachers in the United States are striking to
demand better teaching and working conditions, and those problems are not
limited to this country. Research by the United Nations is predicting a teacher
shortage of 69 million teachers by 2030.
As of September, 2016, fully 25% of the teaching jobs in
Arizona were not filled, and that statistic has not changed much in the last
two years. If you’re a substitute teacher, like me or my son, that’s good news,
because you can always get a job if you want one. Even having substitute teachers
is only a partial solution, since some schools still are having trouble filling
temporary teaching positions. As a result, the Tucson school district recently increased
the daily rate for “hard to fill schools” (which is most of them) from $100 a
day to $135 a day.
Being a teacher, although it is not an easy job, is actually
very rewarding. In addition to the fact that the effective hourly wage is
actually a pretty respectable number (close to $30 an hour) , there IS a lot of
satisfaction that comes from the fact that you often actually wind up TEACHING
students some useful information. In addition, you also LEARN something from
the students on a fairly regular basis.
Last spring, the Red for Ed movement FINALLY prodded the
Arizona legislature to increase teacher salaries by a meaningful amount – but some
of the legislators still do not understand the importance of education in a
state where education is still woefully underfunded.
In January of 2019, 2 of the more conservative members of the
legislature introduced bills that are designed to restrict teacher’s ability to
teach. As a result, the Red for Ed movement is definitely NOT going to go away.
https://azcapitoltimes.com/news/2019/01/04/bills-to-restrict-teachers-reawakens-red-for-ed-movement/
In Donald Jr’s opinion, I’m a loser, and I’m proud of it.
There is one thing for certain though, and that is this:
A year from now, I GUARANTEE you that I not be in prison, and
that’s a guarantee that HE can’t make.
Bye, bye, Donny.
