Are you a bad person if you want your child to return to the classroom? There are some teachers who would say so. What do you say, parents of America? And what will you do next?
“The push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny.”
So tweeted the Chicago Teachers Union on Sunday night.
Then came the avalanche. This time the good guys won, and the way they did offers hope for us all.
“Everything I don’t like is rooted in racism, sexism and misogyny,” one Twitter user wrote.
“Meatloaf on Mondays is rooted in racism, sexism and misogyny,” another added.
We don’t need to go point-for-point with the teachers union, which realized it had said the quiet part out loud, and deleted the tweet.
The tweet was a failure of human thought. It was downright dangerous coming from educators. But if you think that view is limited to one rogue Chicagoan, you haven’t been listening.
To say that only a person degraded by one of society’s isms wants school to return makes sense if you accept the logic of Even If One.
Even if one child, or educator, or family member gets sick and dies from the return to in-person school, just so the parents of America can return to work for Henry Ford or Jeff Bezos, it’s not merely a tragedy, it’s proof of moral bankruptcy.
The classroom, we are told, won’t be safe again until there are zero cases, and zero deaths. Globally.
Are you sexist? Racist? Misogynist? To disagree with teachers on the return to school, you’d apparently have to be. If you can’t un-see that tweet, or un-feel that judgment, you’re not being unreasonable.
When people tell you who they are, listen.
Someone will teach the children of America in-person in fall 2021. Will it be your neighborhood school district? Or, will you have to seek out reasonable people who don’t think the worst of you?
This piece first ran here at the author’s blog, Stories About Stories.
