Teachers Are Not Heroes

I Know What You're Thinking

Don't get upset. I come from a long line of educators. I am floored by the demands of the profession. People have no fucking idea. What teachers do for all of us is staggering. 
Do you realize that the people teachers are trying to teach will soon be out on the STREET?
What I'm talking about is the tone of some of the signs on some of the (long overdue) picket lines we've been seeing across the country in the last year or so. There's an embarrassing self-congratulatory aspect to the signs. Look, we all know what the broad strokes of the job are. If you entered the profession in the last 40 years and you weren't aware that Americans will REVILE you and pay you shit, then shame on you. Don't pat yourself on the back for making a "sacrifice". The only people who should be teaching are people who wouldn't be happy doing something else. Or people on their way to being administrators or blow-hard seminar givers. 
I'm rambling. 
I've expressed myself poorly.
I don't like the, "We're here for the children," signs.

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I get the jokiness of this sign but it still annoys me.

Before I let you go I have to emphasize that whatever crookedness unions have engaged in, I do not believe they can match the corrosive impact of unchecked corporations. We need unions. We need organized labor. We need to be protected from corporations and employers. End of story. We need to collectively bargain. Sometimes unions fuck up. I get that. The answer is not to get rid of unions. I love my union, warts and all.

I guess I'm kind of sick of virtue signaling from both the right and the left. Whether it's talking about our troops to make yourself look patriotic or talking about teachers to make yourself seem like a responsible liberal. I'm kind of tired of it. There are people doing jobs. Jobs we absolutely need. The main thing that makes teachers heroes is that they work at targets of spree killers. In our murder-violence-loving country, don't hang out at a school, that's where sick people go to fire their guns.

Okay, I'm done with you.

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