A woman’s place is in the classroom, as long as she doesn’t expect to make an actual career out of it

You might have heard that down in North Carolina, the Right Wingers in charge of the state house have been mulling over a plan that would let the state fire all the teachers, reduce the job from profession to temp work and hire anyone foolish or desperate enough to take it on for barely above minimum wage.

This has caused sane people to ask why Republicans hate teachers so much down there or anywhere and everywhere, for that matter?

How much time have you got?

It’s a long list that probably starts with the word Unions.  And somewhere on it is the fact that Republicans hate all government employees and regard them as cheats, incompetents, and loafers doing no meaningful work for too much money gouged from honest taxpayers with real jobs. But there’s something that I think is central to the Right’s efforts to punish and humiliate teachers and it’s part and parcel of every other reason they have.

They hate women. This is about putting women who think they have a right to an actual career and lives outside of their proper roles as wives and mothers back in their rightful, God-ordained, subservient place.  The Right wants women out of the workforce and back home making babies. White women. Black women need to stop making babies and go to work at whatever sub-minimum wage they’re lucky enough to get.

Ok, I admit it. I’m an intolerant bigot.  But I believe the American Right has turned the GOP into a party of yahoos who place no value on education. They don’t even know what it means.  They just vaguely suspect it has something to do with making their kids smart.  But they don’t like or trust “smart” people so who needs that?  The purpose of school  is to teach the bare minimum required to hold a job.  Reading, writing---that means good enough spelling, passable grammar, and typing skills. Used to mean penmanship. Beyond that, they see grade school as free daycare, high school as a provider of Friday night entertainment, and college as where you go for job certification if you can’t use a wrench.  And that certification isn’t something students earn.  It’s something customers pay for.  And the more you can afford to pay, the better the certification. That’s only right, as being able to pay or having parents who can pay is regarded as a skill, even a talent.

My bigotry needs refining.

The American Right is a tribe of middle-aged male yahoos fast sliding into middle-age who believe that what’s wrong with the country is that it no longer works as they think it worked when they were eight.

As they fondly misremember it, back then teaching was a woman’s field and the women who went into it did out of the goodness of their hearts for nominal pay either because they were young and didn’t need much because they would soon marry men with real jobs or they were middle-aged or elderly and finished raising their children and had or had husbands with real jobs. Men who go into teaching are weak and effeminate and deserving of the breed of contempt that comes in the form of insultingly low pay.  Unless they’re coaches. Then they are wisest of the wise, imprinters of all anyone needs to know about how to succeed in life and notice how they do it outside a classroom and through practical lessons that require boys to take it out and dish it out like men and push girls to the sidelines.

Basically, they think teaching should be done by nice neighbor ladies and your best friend’s mom but since that won’t happen thanks to uppity feminists putting notions in good women’s heads, then anyone who wants to go into teaching has to be made aware that all teachers are are a class of babysitters and babysitters don’t get paid more than parents feel like paying them, they don’t get benefits, and they certainly don’t get a job for life---they’re expected to grow up and get real jobs---but, maybe, if they’re lucky and they do a really good job of keeping the kids entertained and well-behaved, they get tips.

Comments

[Theophrastus Bombastus von Hoenhenheim den Sidste]

Indeed. I used to work for a Department of Defense laboratory, which afforded me the spectacle of drinking coffee with the engineering types while they traded stories about those damned government employees with their union bosses and how you can't get any work out of the lazy bastards.

And don't get them start on the coloreds in the City!

The only people they accepted as human were Those Who Could Be Seen Working Hard, according to what they accepted as hard work.

Sitting quietly at a desk, thinking hard, and solving their problems did not qualify as Being Seen Working Hard so I quickly moved on to greener pastures. Kurt Vonnegut knew these guys well, as I expect you know.

[Batocchio]

On a roll, Lance (the letters are also good).

[Rebecca Clayton]

A population that doesn't read very well and can't do enough math to understand credit card debt or government budget shenanigans is easier to manipulate and fool. They do hate women, but I think that's just a side benefit.