Being a teacher in the South sounds like hell
I'd rather manage Chris Christie's presidential campaign
Teaching in America already sucks ass: the pay is shit and a large portion of your job is begging Facebook friends to donate to your classroom’s GoFundMe so your students can have crayons.
Somehow, Florida, Texas, and other Southern states have made being a teacher worse.
I don’t know how they did it. It feels like all these Southern governors got together in a big room and brainstormed ways to make teaching more miserable. Imagine a Manhattan Project but for giving your Social Studies teacher anxiety.
It’s just one affliction and insult after another:
What if recommending the wrong book could get you canned?
What if the gym teachers could carry guns?
What if you could get fired for going to a gay bar?
What if, as a teacher, your every post on social media was monitored for “Wokeness” by a bunch of lunatics who love sending death threats?
“Public school teacher in a Southern state” is entering the pantheon of jobs that you’d have to be insane to take — like engineer at Twitter or medical advisor for RFK Jr.
The latest idea is a doozy, and it’s picked up steam in the past couple weeks. The idea: “What if we forced them to teach nonsense”?
Take slavery. Slavery was 100% bad, right? It’s hard to think of a good thing about slavery. “Positive aspects of slavery” would be the most difficult Scattergories prompt of all time.
Somehow, not only did Florida administrators think of a good thing about slavery — they also included it in the mandatory curriculum.
In Florida, public school students will now be taught that “slaves were taught useful skills” that provided a “personal benefit” to the enslaved.
Can you imagine being a history teacher in Florida?
You’ve gotta stand up in front of your students, look them dead in the eye, and say, “Okay, now let’s get to the advantages of being a slave”?
I’d rather work in an open-air Amazon warehouse in Phoenix.
Florida also recently became the first state to approve lesson plans from PragerU. If you don’t know PragerU, it’s like if Bill Nye was made by a QAnon message board. It provides Conservative teachings like “America is Christian” and “Don’t be gay.”
Its founder and namesake is a talk show host. Imagine if your AP Chemistry curriculum was written by Rush Limbaugh. In April 2020 Prager called the COVID lockdowns “the greatest mistake in the history of humanity.”
So remember, Florida kids: If your teacher gives you a pop quiz, and you see the question “Which of these was worse: Slavery, or Olive Garden only being available for takeout for a month…”
You know the answer.
Here’s a good supercut of some of the stuff PragerU will soon be teaching the fine scholars of Daytona Beach:
Man, can you imagine being a teacher and queuing this shit up? Your kids would legitimately learn more about American history from The Sandlot.
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A lot of the real action in Making Teaching Awful is in the ways you can now get fired from your school.
In Houston, a teacher was fired for posting about attending a drag show on Facebook. A teacher in Florida is under investigation for showing the Disney movie Strange World, which features a gay character. A Texas A&M professor was suspended for criticizing the lieutenant governor. Also at Texas A&M, a celebrated Black journalism professor was hounded out of a job offer after a bunch of wealthy donors found out she studied diversity.
Being a teacher in the South feels like a neo-Christian Squid Game. One false step and you’re working at Home Depot (which, on the bright side, will still let you stack 2x4s even if you go to a gay bar after work).
Where does it end? Is this worth the $40,000 a year? I am not surprised Florida has its “worst teacher shortage in history.” I’m sure the Russian military is having trouble finding recruits, too.