General Discussion
Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsTeachers are Essential Workers. In Trump's View, That Makes Them Expendable.
For Trump, calling someone an essential worker means that their lives don't actually matter. Like the grocery store clerk, a poorly-paid cog in the food distribution machine, who must work in a dangerous environment to pay the rent, etc., teachers are expendable commodities.
What matter that they get exposed to a potentially deadly virus by their students? If one dies, another can take her or his place in the classroom. Thus spake Donald Trump.
For Trump and his ilk, individuals have no value whatsoever. If they die, they die, according to Donald Trump. Very sad, but we can just hire another one.
150,000 dead by early August? No matter. There are 330 million people in the United States. What does it matter if a few die? The economy must be served, according to Trump.
The schools must open! The children must be sent to schools, virus or no virus! Sure, some will die. Some will infect their teachers, parents and grandparents. However, in Trump's mind, none of that matters, because there are plenty more where they came from. That's the President's plan.
That's how the current President of the United States views individual American citizens. Imagine his lack of concern for people elsewhere in the world.
bigtree
(86,020 posts)...volunteered nearly 20 more.
My wife was a teacher's aide in a special needs class.
They're certainly essential, but not expendable.
MineralMan
(146,351 posts)Each of us owes something to teachers from our childhoods and adolescence. While not every teacher lives on in my memory, some still come to mind on a regular basis as people who taught me things I can never forget.
For Donald Trump, teachers are of no value at all. He hated school. He doesn't consider what they do to have value, either. He's not very fond of children, either, probably be cause he grew up in a family that ignored him and his siblings, for the most part.
Donald Trump is a pathetic model of leadership.
iemitsu
(3,888 posts)None of the ones currently working plan to return to a Covid classroom.
A paycheck is not worth a death sentence.
The Velveteen Ocelot
(116,003 posts)The kids, too.