Keep it Simple: Let teachers teach and children learn
My two oldest grandchildren started school a couple of weeks ago in Midland. By this time next week all of Michigan's schools should be well underway into a new school year. Let us hope the current year is nothing like the last two when fallout from the global COVID-19 pandemic upended the education of our children in extreme ways.
It was one thing for schools to resort to distance learning at the beginning of the pandemic as a strategy to keep students, teachers, and the public in general, from getting sick and dying. To require students and staff to mask up for the same reason made perfect sense to those who care about the health and safety for the common good of everyone impacted by this deadly disease.
We quickly ran into problems though when politicians and parents who thought they knew better than the health experts and educators jumped into attack mode and began suing and fighting with school districts for implementing such things as mask mandates and in-person classes to curb illness in the schools and general population.
Basking in the notoriety brought on by these antics, the anti-vaxxers, anti-maskers and anti-everything else, then began to take the culture wars fight to the heart of school districts attacking everything from the supposed use of Critical Race Theory, transgender youth, and book banning, as the flavor-of-the-month as they sought to make it even harder for teachers across American to do what they were hired to do: teach.
Schools have no interest in turning our children gay or transgender, they are though, in the business of teaching our children to become the best they can be as they grow into useful and responsible citizens, and living up to their full potential in the bargain. This is the gift teachers strive to provide their students. Not off the wall silly conspiracy theories.
Let teachers teach and our children learn. It's as simple as that. Teachers are trained to teach and children, if given the opportunity, have the natural ability and curiosity to learn. Again, it's as simple as that. We don't need our teachers accused of being groomers of pedophilia, turning our kids gay or, gasp ... liberals.
We are turning our schools and teachers and ancillary staff into scapegoats for what is currently dividing our country politically and culturally. Teachers are too busy maintaining classroom order and establishing an atmosphere conducive to learning. Too busy grading papers and creating lesson plans to engage our children in the art of learning. Too busy to groom your child for some nefarious liberal agenda which exists only in the minds of people too easily led astray by folks encouraged to ban library books and getting in the face of teachers teaching.
Educators are leaving the field in alarming numbers; something which had been brewing even before fallout from the pandemic has made their jobs even more onerous and stressful. Statistics indicate 50-percent of new teachers leave the field within their first five years of employment. In January 2020, just as the pandemic turned things upside-down, there were 10,600,000 teachers nationwide. Two years later the number stands at an even 10 million. We've lost more than half a million college educated teachers and we need to stop the bleeding before it becomes even more dire in our schools.
This year, as our most priceless commodity; our children, head back to the classroom, let's all take a deep breath, shake off the hostility many of us currently feel towards the education system and agree to let our teachers do what they do best: teach. It could be a learning experience for all of us; not just our children.
— Michael Jones is a columnist and contributor for the Gaylord Herald Times. He can be reached at mfomike2@gmail.com.
This article originally appeared on The Petoskey News-Review: Keep it Simple: Let teachers teach and children learn by Michael Jones
