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Comment by version_five | Hacker News Reader

The article hypothesizes that it's some version of covid restrictions not being harsh enough that is causing teachers to leave. That may be true for some, but I think the opposite is at least equally true, that nobody wants to work under all kinds of restrictions, and are either waiting until they end or just retiring. Pretending that if we just made everything more restrictive, people would happily return to their low paid job is fantasy.

I expect this is true across low paid jobs. Organizations keep instituting more measures and burdens on workers and pretend they don't have a consequence.

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What other jobs are exempted from these restrictions though? Virtually every indoor worker is mandated to wear masks. And large employers will soon be required to mandate vaccination. There’s almost no where to work that doesn’t have restrictions in the US.

It isn't like this everywhere in the US.

The US CDC says to require masks for all areas with substantial spread, which is most of the US right now, and OSHA is working on a nation-wide vaccination mandate right now.

And yet, for the state I spend most of my time in, masks have been voluntary for over a year.

In that case, then why are teacher’s quitting over the “restrictions” if they’re voluntary?

They aren't here in any meaningful volume.

Like remote works?

It's shameful the article does not contrast states with and without COVID restrictions. Instead it just "decides" it's lack of COVID restrictions, cherry picks some states and publishes.

And then the media wonders why people don't trust them.

I doubt people are leaving due to the restrictions. I personally think the headaches dealing with parents has more to do with it.

I personally watched a school board meeting in our county devolve into a circus. I couldn't believe that suburban middle-class parents would openly talk about crazy conspiracy theories.

If I were a teacher and had to deal with parents complaining about mask mandates, vaccines, and on top of that had to deal with the extra work of in person and remote learning, I too would quit.

Worse, they've got two sets of outraged, unhinged parents to deal with. There's the ones who want no masks and no vaccine mandates for their kids. And there's the ones who want their kids to never, ever be exposed to anyone who isn't vaccinated and isn't wearing a mask. And there is absolutely nothing that the teachers or the school board can do to fix this.

(Note that this is true regardless of what you think of the correctness of either position.)

I think there is a general trend of "front line" folks being stuck with the burden of other people's decisions.

Maybe it's always been true to some extent, but "standardized processes" have made it much worse because nobody in an org can even think for themselves anymore, they just have to take crap for some committee decision.

One of the best examples is Uber (the most consumer and employee hostile company outside of Canadian telcos) where, regardless of the problem, your only recourse is to give th driver (or restaurant) a bad rating, or withhold tip, when almost all problems actually originate with corporate uber.

It's the same thing here - you can't blame the teachers, but its certainly not fair that there is no other recourse for stupid policies (for the individual's definition or stupid)

It is ironic that for years teachers complained that parents did not care about their children's education, treated the schools has babysitters, etc.

Then the parents get wind of some of the things being taught in schools, take exception to it, and now they are conspiracy theorists or worst terrorists for wanting to have a say in their child's education.

Experts in <field> dislike it when laypeople treat <field> as unimportant and disregard it, also get even more upset when—still paying little attention to it but jumping on nonsense spouted by propagandists—laypeople pretend to know more about <field> then experts while undermining it by parroting dumbass conspiracy theories they are fed about <field>.

Seems perfectly normal, and common across fields of expertise, not “ironic” in any way.

I always love the hand-wave of Conspiracy Theory to label everything these days

It is not "Conspiracy Theory" when you have actual evidence, video evidence no less, and official statements from national organizations, and paper records all supporting the claims.

We're probably not talking about anything that has "actual evidence".

So the many many videos of teachers talking about all the things they do in class rooms, statements from the NEA, recording taken from the Remote Learning classrooms are not evidence?

Remember that is what started all of this, at the start of COVID both parents and students where home at the same time, and many parents started to observe their childs lessons in real time since they were conducted via remote learning.

This is what got the ball rolling as parents where shocked and alarmed at what they were hearing with their own ears coming from some of these "teachers"

Education is a parent's/ a community's job. Instruction is a teacher job. If Parent don't agree with the programs (which they of course read), they are free to choose another school or to teach their kids home.

School programs ARE flawed, whether it's science (even math course are!) or non-science. This is a trade-off, accuracy losses against information speed and time spent in problem resolution.

I've heard two years ago that the US is becoming a bit too grade-centric and that problem resolution is not a valued skills anymore pre-college, due to decisions in the ministry under Bush-Clinton-Bush administrations, but my point is valid for most of europe

>> they are free to choose another school

I wish that were the case, I fully support School Choice, and a Voucher system that will put the money in the hands of parents to make the choice best for their child instead of only having school choice be an option for the wealthy

homeschooling is a choice available too, and i'll tell you one thing: most homeschooled kids i worked with were from poor families, almost always single-income and often with this income being close to minimum wage. Mostly rural (or rather in small, 100 to 500 hab towns).

The context in which i met them was great, and their parent had to be involved to put them there, so i guess i received the "best" examples of homschooled kids in my area, but they did not have any major issue (often missing some in STEM knowledge, but all of them with a logical/creative mind that make learning hisghschool math a breeze, and anyway, our association was there for this exact issue)

I would like to see some of the money from a voucher be allowed to be spent on Home Schooling resources and technology, Provide computers, internet, books, etc all in some way under the same School Choice Voucher system

Vouchers with for-profit school corps?

Yes? and coop's, Learning Hubs, Money for Home Schooling resources, etc etc etc

Unlike many here I am not opposed to capitalism

It's been a disaster in the few places it's been tried. Chile (since abolished) and currently in Sweden. It very obviously causes the school corps to cut costs by various means that have a negative societal impact.

For example by giving undeservedly high grades that upper-middle class seemingly happily accept to get their kids into high-status high education. These grades then conveniently becomes part of their marketing.

An even more sinister example is their willingness to actively segregate their schools to have "easy", as in cheap, students that don't require as much resources (like actual teachers) as people - on average - from less privileged backgrounds.

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