Even if I were passionate about teaching, and intended to make it a lifetime career, I wouldn’t teach in a state that threatened to throw teachers in jail for teaching kids the facts about how America historically mistreated black people and still has a racism problem.
That’s only one of several things driving teachers to retire or quit, and driving down education enrollments at colleges. The teacher exodus is reality; many states are now facing teacher shortages, and some of them deserve to.
Low pay and little respect for educators often go hand-in-hand with restricting what teachers can teach and banning book from school libraries. The states that are bad at one of these usually are bad at all three.
This CNN article (read it here) delves into the multiple reasons why teachers are leaving the profession and it’s becoming difficult to recruit new teachers. High on the list are stress, low pay, and the pandemic’s added demands. A rash of school shootings also is a factor. The article also discusses the impact of rightwing efforts to bully teachers into silence about America’s racial history and current race problems. Which isn’t surprising given the GOP’s toboggan slide under Trump into a white supremacist political movement.
The American Association of Colleges for Teacher Education (AACTE) says a “recent legislative push in states across the US to mandate what can — and can’t — be taught in classrooms is not helping …. more than 17.7 million public school students in the US have had their learning restricted when it comes to teaching concepts related to race, racism and gender.”
CNN says, “The problem is nothing new … even prior to debates flaring up around Critical Race Theory (CRT), educators of color long felt policed about what they could teach, which was a deterrent for aspiring teachers,” contributing to a lack of diversity in the teaching profession: “In 2017-18, nearly 80% of public school teachers were White, 9% were Hispanic, 7% were Black and 2% Asian.”
I don’t have a solution for this. If race-“woke” parents are allowed to dictate curricula, and gutless politicians accede to their demands, there isn’t a solution. States who impose a white supremacist agenda on teachers don’t deserve to have teachers. Of course, that’s a quandary for students and their parents. If I lived in one of those states, I’d consider my options for moving elsewhere. If I were a business owner or executive, I’d think twice about locate a headquarters office or plant there, no matter what other advantages that state might offer, because I’d be asking my employees to raise their families and educate their kids in a setting that’s very unfair to them.
Leaving such states, or staying out of them, isn’t boycotting, it’s avoidance. It’s nothing more than not subjecting one’s family to their hate and racism, and not letting people like that dictate what your kids learn so they won’t grow up to be like them.
Related stories: Glenn Youngkin, a businessman who got elected Virginia governor by pretending to be a moderate Republican, has set up a “tip line” for people to report teachers suspected of teaching “divisive subjects” (read story here). Will Virginia now experience a teacher exodus? Meanwhile, an Iowa Republican wants to install cameras in classrooms, and Iowa’s GOP senate leader insinuated teachers are “pushing pedophilia and incest” (that story is here). Who, in their right mind, would want to teach their children?
And about teacher pay: Many teachers have to work second jobs (see story here). According to a chart in that story, Washington is the best state at improving teacher salaries, while Indiana is the worst.
Cyberstalking parents: Teachers struggling on low pay and harassed by political interference in what they can teach probably are being kept under surveillance by their students’ parents, too (see story here).