GOP populism is hurting the teaching profession
We are living in a populist era that frames public officials as corrupt elites. The effects of the ensuing hostility to the capacity of public institutions to function feels like a big missed story of our time, one whose consequences will be felt for years if not decades.
This story is playing out in multiple policy areas, but educators are at the front lines. Teachers in America, like most parts of the world, have had a brutal couple of years. They have had to work through a pandemic, and were criticized for not being quick enough to get kids back into classrooms.
But American teachers faced an additional strain, which was the flare-up of anti-institutional populism. The wearing of masks became a flashpoint, resulting in protests and anti-mask mandates. Teachers have been accused of brainwashing kids with a CRT ideology most of them would have been hard pressed to describe a few years back. They are facing book bans, new constraints on how they discuss race and gender, and demands for transparency in the most minute detailing of lesson plans. And they have been grotesquely tagged as “groomers” if they discuss gender identity. Evidence-based pedagogies like “socio-emotional learning” have suddenly become questionable, presented, falsely, by Republican leaders, as a form of CRT “by another name.”
Such changes are going to make the teaching profession less attractive, and our schools less able to attract and retain good teachers. We just don’t know the scale of the damage yet.
https://donmoynihan.substack.com/p/gop-populism-is-hurting-the-teaching
Because righties consider intelligence to be elitist.
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