♫ And now she walks as though she was
Now she walks again with us
Now she walks as though she was
Newborn ♫
— “Newborn,” Guadalcanal Diary, 2×4
Happy Easter, Passover,* Opening Day, and belated Nowruz.
Speaking of things resurrected, set free, playing ball, and begun anew, how about that public school teacher’s labor movement?
From West Virginia to Arizona, underpaid and overworked educators have left their classrooms and stormed state capitols to demand fair wages. An insult of a public pension fix got treated as such by Kentucky teachers who staged a sick-out the morning after legislators tried to slip it through without debate. In Oklahoma, where the fracking boom has compelled convenience stores to pay as much as $20/hour to high school dropouts, men and woman with master’s degrees have found themselves forced to eat free breakfasts in the cafeteria because their school district paychecks do not cover groceries.
The dire straits of the people who teach the overwhelming majority of kids who will one day underwrite Uvular’s Social Security benefits did not just happen. Look no farther back in time than Wisconsin Gov. Scott Walker committing multiple felonies to win an election so he could keep his promise of bankrupting members of public employee unions.
Teaching never received any respect in the United States, and it has always gone undercompensated. Teachers’ unions formed in the first decades of the 20th century precisely for this reason. As women consistently replaced men at the high school level, unionization became the only way to secure salaries for professionals stereotyped as spinsters who lived at home and lived off their father’s money. Marrying often cost female teachers their jobs. And forget about becoming pregnant in any circumstance.
Premarital sex cast a woman who should serve as a moral example to the young as a fallen harlot. If wedded, no school would dare misuse taxpayers’ money supporting a someone who would abandon her own child in favor of caring for others’ offspring.**
State education associations continue wielding great power in all areas except salary and benefits. Kansas essentially stopped paying its teachers altogether when the disastrous tax policies of ex-Gov. Sam Brownback shortened the school year by two months and the school week to four days. Oklahoma actually reduced teacher salaries to give tax breaks to oil and natural gas drillers.***
Teachers have started fighting back. The United States can only improve if K-12 educators succeed. Children will learn more and better. Your humble WPT host will not end his days set adrift in an Arctic sea where elders once retained their dignity huddling on sheet ice.^ Workers everywhere will lose their chains.
Probably not that last thing. But we should all draw hope from the rising tide of social activism aimed at achieving positive outcomes. Marching for women, our lives, fair pay. It all ends well if it goes on with will.
For a moment or two, though, put down your placards and let your fingers do the walking through this weekend’s politics thread.
++++
n.b., Header photo via NPR; Adam Beam/AP
*Aside: As the firstborn son of gentiles, Uvular always appreciates waking up the day after Passover. Stay out of Egypt, Israelites. For everyone’s sake.
**This, of course, did not apply to black or immigrant maids and nannies. “White,” “American” mothers alone got treated as sacrosanct to the point of having no other opportunities.
***Who now cause multiple mini-earthquakes each day in a state that previously experienced about one measurable temblor a decade.
^Won’t somebody think about the ice floes?