Be Careful What You Ask For…Part II

So…all over the news, states are lamenting the fact that they now have a serious teacher shortage. Why? Because the fringe right has been calling teachers “groomers”. Then there are the mean-spirited report of teachers offering kids banned books, supporting LGBTQ+ teens, or allegations that CRT is being taught in their classroom. They’ve declared war on teachers and now they can’t understand why they’re leaving in droves. The facts don’t matter. The right wanted a culture war, and now they’ve got it. Unfortunately, they didn’t realize the consequences of bashing those wonderful human beings charged with educating little Johnny or little Susie. Parents better start honing their skills and be prepared to homeschool the kiddos because with classrooms of 70+, your kids aren’t learning jack shit. Recent articles about education in the US suggest that we’ve been falling behind our global competition for years in things such as: literacy and numeracy scores, self-regulation skills, and engagement in acts of cooperation, kindness, and other prosocial behaviors. Enter the culture wars and the gap will only get larger. I don’t even want to be around in the next ten to twenty years if we continue down this path. We will reap what we sow…kids who are ignorant of history and an apathetic acceptance of racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.

A few years ago it was the nurses, doctors, and hospitals who were getting beat up after the initial cheering of those wonderful professionals. Somehow people forgot they were the ones who took care of us during the height of COVID. Soon masking and vaccines became so controversial the conspiracy theories started about hospitals fudging on the COVID case counts so they could make more money. Total bullshit, of course. This bad behavior on the right resulted in a mass exodus of health care professionals to add to the already emerging crisis of staff shortages. Add the threats against police, FBI, and election workers, and I want to know who the hell do they think is going to teach their kids, protect their families or take care of their health care needs if the radical right keeps picking on every single group that their cult leader tells them they should hate.

I think if we’re going to pick on anyone, we should start with lawyers, executives making 1,000 times more than their employees, or politicians that can’t seem to work together for the good of the nation. I’m not sure that a shortage in any of those areas would have nearly the same impact as the crisis we now face with the teacher shortage.

Obviously, the far right doesn’t understand psychology very much…if a book is put on a ban list, that just makes kids want to discover what all the fuss is about. If it’s controversial, those kids are going to search the internet and find every single banned book on every and any list. I almost wish one of my books would make the banned book list because I suspect I would receive a bump in sales. Hmmm…why don’t y’all assume all my books are banned…now you can run right out and see what the fuss is all about! You know the drill…just click one of the links below!

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