If Teachers Won’t Teach, Follow Ronald Reagan’s Example and Fire Them

Townhall.com ^ | August 5, 2020 | Bob Barr

[Kaslin]

When 13,000 air traffic controllers walked off the job in August 1981, President Ronald Reagan had this to say: “Tell them when the strike’s over, they don’t have any jobs.” The media, not yet fully familiar with the seriousness with which Reagan intended to govern, scoffed at the president’s threat. But it was not a bluff. Two days later, when more than 11,000 controllers refused to come back, Reagan fired them all. It was a powerful move, and demonstrated to the entire country that essential public employees serve the public, not union bosses. America’s public school teachers should be reminded of this fact.

With thousands of teachers across the country currently protesting a return to the classroom because of COVID fears, Reagan’s example is particularly relevant. Like air traffic controllers, teachers sign employment contracts. While air traffic controllers contract with the federal government and teachers with local school districts, the principle is the same: perform the duties for which you were hired, or be fired.

Teachers who refuse to teach in the setting for which they were hired – the classroom – need to stop acting like scared bunnies and grow up. If they truly are “essential” workers, as they remind us repeatedly, then they need to start behaving like other essential employees and get back to work.

Many businesses, unfortunately, have been forced by the government to shut down wholly or in part in reaction to the coronavirus pandemic, and this is having a devastating effect on our national economy. Amidst this devastation, public schools in virtually every jurisdiction across the country ended the school year early after COVID hit our shores in March.

Unlike commercial businesses, however, the prolonged closure of schools has ramifications far beyond the economic. Moreover, educating children is a process that cannot be switched on and off like a production line; the damage to young minds that are allowed to lie fallow month after month, or which are presented with “virtual” learning in place of human-to-human interface, creates learning voids not easily replenished.

“Teaching” means, if anything, working with students as well as encouraging students to work with other students in a social setting for the purpose of learning essential skills and acquiring essential knowledge. “Virtual” teaching is not teaching at all; it is cinematography – nothing more than an adult (the “teacher”) speaking to a camera, with an audience of one (the “student”) at the end of the electronic transmission watching a screen. Raw information may be thus transmitted, but not true knowledge.

What many public school teachers and their union bosses at the National Education Association appear to be setting as the price for them to return to the classroom, is a guarantee that the environment will be 100% percent COVID-free at all times. Such a condition is, of course, impossible to meet and essentially allows the teachers to avoid a return to their job site for the foreseeable future.

Moreover, demanding a zero-risk premise for classroom teaching sends the message to students (and everyone else for that matter) that risk-avoidance is the highest and most desirable goal for society. This further erodes the principle on which America’s greatness heretofore has been premised – that society advances not by avoiding challenges, but by meeting and overcoming them.

There might perhaps be somewhat more compassion for the our-way-or-the-highway posture being taken by these public school teachers had they and their union not spent decades working to ensure that public education remained the only practical option for millions of families across America. Unionized teachers continue to vilify homeschooling and oppose providing taxpaying parents any meaningful ability to choose where to send their children to be educated.

No teacher should be forced to go into the classroom against their will. However, if local government leaders properly equip them with personal protective equipment and mandate reasonable protocols within the schools to minimize the risk of COVID, and if teachers and their unions then still refuse to teach in school, it is time to “pull a Reagan” and fire them. The money saved from thinning educational bloat of protesting teachers and useless district administrators with nothing to do, can be returned to parents who are struggling to pay for alternatives to ensure their children actually have a productive school year.

[luvbach1]

I heard a NY teacher explain that schools must replace their ventilation systems before she and her cohorts would consider returning to teach. She mentioned other requirements. Sounds like a liberal wish list must be satisfied before schools can open. At least until November 3rd.

[Pox]

Exactly what I proposed several weeks ago.

Plenty of unemployed Americans who I believe are quite capable of doing an equivalent or likely better job.

[newzjunkey]

Those are not equivalent situations. Covid can kill.

When I saw pictures from Georgia schools that went back yesterday, I noticed no attempts at social distancing between students and no masks on most of them.

Would I want to be trapped in a room with 30 disease vectors all day or a couple hundred daily if at junior high or high school level? Probably not.

I say this as an essential worker dealing with the stupid public every day since covid started, Kemp is doing his best to flip GA blue.

[SpaceBar]

You are very wrong and ignorant.

ad hominem attack right out of the gate...

[newzjunkey]

Schools opening or not is up to the State or Local Board. The government has NO say.

Uhhh... they ARE government, either appointed bureaucrats or elected representatives.

[Salvavida]

We would do better with adults that have NO COLLEGE DEGREE but are self-taught and have a passion for this country and youth.

[SpaceBar]

Few things are abysmal as the quality of taxpayer funded “public” education in the United States.

[MayflowerMadam]

“Sounds like a liberal wish list must be satisfied before schools can open. At least until November 3rd.”

I don’t think that the November 3 date will impact the teachers AT ALL! The election will impact most things related to Covid, but not the teachers. The majority of them are slackers, and they don’t want to work again — ever — and still get paid. The WuFlu it the current excuse, but they’ll come up with something else.

[386wt]

Amen.

[Charles H. (The_r0nin)]

The problem is that (at least in my locality) most of the teachers want to go back. It is the administrators, teacher’s union (not to be confused with the teachers... in this right-to-work state the vast majority of teachers don’t belong to the union... less than 30% in my county) and the school board that want schools to stay closed. The vast majority of parents want them open, too. In fact, the county gave out a survey where more than 8 of 10 parents wanted to return to in-person learning, so the county disavowed its own survey!

By all means, fire the teachers that don’t return. But that’s not going to get kids back in school. The school boards and administrations need to feel the pain before this will change...

[Flaming Conservative]

Teacher’s Unions are powerful leftist organizations. And while many teachers, especially in their 40’s and under, have, unfortunately, been indoctrinated by the lefty professors who taught them, I’d say many of them have a pretty tough job teaching in public schools, where little or no discipline is allowed. You hear of teachers being hit, spit on, ignored, etc., and Covid19 not withstanding, a lot of them should get combat pay. Our permissive society has ruined a lot of things, and many public schools are among them. Having said all that, if I were a teacher in a public school full of undisciplined kids, I’d prefer distance teaching, myself. Or maybe I’d try a private school. Of course, most private schools pay half or less than half of public schools, but it might be worth it to have a little discipline in the classroom, and motivated parents.

[Flaming Conservative]

About half my property taxes go toward schools where the buildings are closed and teachers aren’t teaching.

When do we get rebates - where is this $$ going?

---

I believe they’re still getting paid.

[Vermont Lt]

Federal Gov. really, Trumps answer to these questions should be: Tour local government knows best. That is what a federal republic is all about.

Put the onus on local government. Teach a civics lesson at 5 PM every night during his presser.

[Scott Kraut]

In much of America sending kids to public school should be considered child abuse.

[Brilliant]

I would not make them temps. I suspect that there would be a lot of turnover during the year.

[drypowder]

Trash tenure for good and fire the teachers that refuse to show up and do their job. The teachers that won’t go to work are more than likely the kind that need to be fired anyway because they obviously don’t care about the students.

[Brilliant]

And I suspect that it would not even be necessary to hire replacements. In Florida I understand that only about 30% of the students will be attending live classes. I suspect you can find 30% of the teachers to do so as well.

[Pearls Before Swine]

So, if you won’t make them temps, and you would let the suspended teachers come back in a year... how would that work?

In your scenario, would the suspended teachers draw full, half, maintenance, or no salary during the year? And then they’d be able to come back to their old positions?

[Brilliant]

No salary but they can return. I suspect a lot would not and also that you’d not have to hire many replacements because Class enrollment would be down. My suspicion by the way is that this is going to go on for several years so if they won’t want to come back this year then they won’t next year either.

[Agamemnon]

My local teachers do fine.

They are fine if they go back to school to teach the kids like your tax dollars have paid them all these years to do. If they do not go back, they are not good teachers. They are effectively on strike if they fail to return to the classroom to teach the kids.

This is another area where people want to nationalize education. I disagree. If we were to nationalize education, my town’s superior schools would be dragged down to the mean. That would kills my home’s value.

Same argument used with the Air Traffic Controllers. "Oh the horrors! Without the same Air Traffic Controllers who walked off/fired themselves, we'll have mid air collisions and we're all gonna die." Didn't happen that way did it?

Your schools are not superior when your teachers stage a walk out. Tell them to go back to work or they won't get paid.

Why is it everyone is interested in nationalizing everything. Schools opening or not is up to the State or Local Board. The government has NO say.

The National Education Association is the union to which your teachers belong at the state level in order teach in your "superior" public schools. If your teachers are so great have them walk away from the union, or maybe Trump can help them do so by decertifying the union.

Did ANYONE take 4th grade civics?

Did Reagan offend your 4th Grade-level sensibilities back in 1981 when he stared down another union and won?

FReegards!