The Role of Moral Injustice in Teacher Burnout

What is "moral injustice"? Originally coined to describe the dissonance that occurs when soldiers are forced to kill fellow human beings in war, the term is now more generally employed to describe, among other things, any situation in which one's job requires engaging in activities that contradict one's moral code.  

Being consistently expected to engage in activities that conflict with one's moral code can lead to feelings of anxiety, shame, guilt, alienation, frustration, and betrayal - circumstances that can significantly contribute to employee burnout.

We all know that teachers are resigning in droves, but why? A large part of the problem, I believe, is that teachers are increasingly being required to engage in activities that conflict with their sense of right and wrong.  As a society we have become adept at "gaslighting" teachers into believing that many of the expectations listed below are justified (or at least "a necessary cost of doing business"), but this hasn't extinguished the deep sense of "ick" (a highly non-scientific word meant to represent everything between from distaste to revulsion) that teachers experience when practices such as the ones described below are forced upon them: 

1. Being forced to inflate the grades of students so that they no longer bear any relation to actual student learning. (Some reasons teachers are increasingly being pressured to inflate grades: to protect the accreditation of failing schools or school systems; to justify decisions to promote students rather than fund expensive remediation classes; to conceal the extent of learning loss during Covid; to mask achievement gaps related to at-risk populations ....)
2. Being discouraged from documenting student misbehaviour (fights, theft, threats, vandalism, bullying) lest the school's safety rating, reputation, or accreditation be negatively impacted.
3. Promoting students who have not mastered grade level content - a practice justified by the belief that the practice of holding students back causes lasting social-emotional harm, notwithstanding the social-emotional harm caused by dooming these students to academic failure for the remainder of their academic career.
4. Allowing students who have been failing all year to participate in “grade recovery” activities that merely stuff them with enough short-term learning to pass gateway test but do not in any way compensate for actual learning loss.
5. Being expected to accommodate the needs of disruptive students at the cost of the slighting the academic rights and needs of the other students in the class. 
6. Being required to adhere to curricula that omit certain important topics due to political constraints.
7. Being falsely accused by society of engaging in politically inflammatory practices (indoctrinating students, teaching critical race theory). (Seriously, if teachers could indoctrinate students, they'd all be showering regularly and doing their homework.) 
8. Bearing the entire blame when students are disengaged, disruptive, or unsuccessful. Not sure why society seems intent on shifting the blame for student misbehaviour away from parents and onto teachers ("You must not have done enough to build a relationship with the student"), but that's what's happening. 
9. Basing teacher evaluations on factors that teachers cannot control, such as student academic growth (impacted by family engagement, absences, psychological trauma, poverty), observations conducted too sporadically to be valid, measures of student/parent "satisfaction" (hugely subjective).
10. Requiring teachers to teach content areas in which they have insufficient expertise, to include the practice of requiring untrained AIs, interns, and staff to fill in gaps left by teacher shortages - rapidly becoming an established practice in many districts.
11. Ignoring the social-emotional needs of advanced students by depriving them of intellectual challenge - typically justified by an imperfect understanding of the difference between "equality" (everyone gets the same thing) and "equity" (everyone gets what they need).   
12. Forcing level 1-2 ELL students to participate in classes far above their comprehension level.
13. Forcing ELL and intellectually disabled students to participate in wildly inappropriate testing.
14. Requiring teachers to restrict their lessons to standards that have not been updated to reflect new discoveries, changing perspectives, or evolving needs. (We're still teaching kids how to use a lathe but not how their cellphones work?)
15. Being required to teach using methods known to be ineffective. (Ex: strategies lacking scientific/statistical validity, strategies based on debunked theories.)
16. Requiring that teachers make and implement decisions based on data known to be invalid. (Ex: poorly crafted assessments that (1) don't align with standards or (2) measure factors like cultural literacy or reading level that have nothing to do with content knowledge).
17. Seeing their lived realities. (Ex: persistent unrealistic expectations, stress) negated/gaslighted by admins and society.
18. Being forced to stomach “the parent/student is always right” policies that place unreasonable burdens on teachers. (Ex: "The student's been on vacation for 3wks; we'll need to catch them up"; "My son can't be bothered to write down due dates so please email us every time something is due.")
19. The expectation that placing teacher lives in peril (moldy classrooms, violent students, school shootings, pandemics) is justified. 
20. The expectation that teachers pay for required materials out of their own pockets. (A recent example: schools that refuse to buy copier paper because students have laptops.)  
21. Being expected to prioritize the needs of the school over the needs of teachers and their families. (Ex: unreasonable limitations on the use of personal leave).
22. Being expected by society to work for less than their expertise is worth because “it’s about the outcomes, not the income." (See 'gaslighting.')

Reality Check: 10 Things Your Parents Should Have Taught You About the Real World

File this under "flash rant," but getting tired of interacting with folks who seem not to have been taught these few foundational principles of life by the people - parents, guardians - who should have done so. 

Perhaps if we posted these 10 "reality checks" in every classroom, instead of the 10 Commandments, we might actually start churning out students prepared to function as responsible, respectful adults.

1. Life isn't fair; sometimes good guys get hurt, and sometimes bad guys prevail.
2. People aren't thinking about you nearly as much as you think you are.
3. You don't know half of what you think you know.
4. You are free to make your own choices, but you are not free of the consequences.
5. You don't get to dictate what other people think or do.
6. Only you can fix you.
7. Basic respect is a right; enduring respect is earned.
8. If you keep doing what you've always done, you'll keep getting what you always get.
9. Other people's lived experience is just as valid as yours.
10. People will judge you based on your actions, not your intentions.

20+ Actionable Strategies for Addressing Poverty in the U.S.

A couple of days ago I summarized some of the most insidious factors that are exacerbating and perpetuating poverty in the U.S. It was a pretty bleak post. Today I take on the challenge of listing potential actions we can take to alleviate poverty, focusing on actions that are politically and economically feasible. 

I'm also intentionally focusing that do more than make poverty more survivable. Surely our nation can do better than merely making it possible for the poor to stave off starvation and homelessness ... barely. Our goal, according to Matthew Desmond, author of Poverty, by America, should be "poverty emancipation" - making it possible for people currently living below the poverty line to build wealth and emerge from poverty entirely.

Looking for more in-depth information? Desmond's excellent and authoritative jeremiad is the place to start, but I've included a bibliography (below) of other resources I drew upon in composing this list.   

1. Banking & Finance Reforms
1. Cap the fees that predatory lenders can charge on short-term loans - protections that apply not just to the initial loan, but loan extensions. Not only are the rates on short-term loans obscenely high, but many of these lenders deliberately structure their loans so that they are easily extended (all the better to tempt desperate clients), at rates that quickly become insanely usurious.
2. Create means-tested bank accounts specifically for the poor. Currently, people who live in poverty have two options, both of them equally expensive: either (1) deposit their money in banks, only to watch their balances whittled away by bank and ATM fees, or (2) utilize check-cashing companies that claim a percentage of the money they pay out. Poor people need access to safe, affordable banking: accounts that have no required minimum balance, that are exempt from ATM fees, that eschew long holds that make funds unavailable, and that are protected against exorbitant overdraft fees. Another advantage of bank accounts: they create a financial track record that can help people in poverty build credit. 
2. Housing Reforms
1. Invest in affordable, accessible housing. Insufficient housing drives up pricing for everyone, but people in poverty take the worst hit because they end up paying out a much higher percentage of their income to secure housing.
2. Pass zoning laws that make it easier to build high density housing. One way to make more housing available? Topple the current laws that protect low-density housing. In his book, Desmond suggests that when laws were passed in the 1970s eliminating redlining, many municipalities simply transitioned to zoning laws designed to exclude the types of housing that might attract "undesirables." We need to call out these laws for what they are - elitist and exclusionary - and make it easier to build lower-cost, higher-density housing where it's needed ... not just where it won't bother anyone.
3. Make it easier for people to obtain competitive mortgages for lower-cost housing. Banks tend to turn their noses up at mortgages for lower-cost housing because the modest returns they'll realize off the interest aren't worth the effort (or the perception/reality of risk), making it difficult for people in reduced circumstances to participate in the real estate market, one of the U.S.'s most reliable sources of wealth generation. 
4. Limit the extent to which landlords can raise rents. This is a tricky one, as it goes against our American spirit of capitalism to limit the extent to which people profit off their investments. But research shows that when minimum wage is raised, or rates of wealth in poor communities increase (perhaps due to the arrival of a well-paying employer), landlords reliably raise their rates to absorb the difference. If we want to increase the spendable income of people in poverty, we need to find ways to limit the ability of landlords to negate gains in income.  
5. Make it easier for tenants to transition rental buildings to co-ops. Another way to participate in the real estate market: allowing tenants to organize and purchase properties that are on sale by the landlord. Unfortunately, current law makes it easy for landlords to leverage their advantage in such negotiations, demanding prices and concessions far above what the regular market would bear. 
6. Aggressively monitor rental units for housing code violations; respond immediately to complaints with investigations, fines, and follow-ups. What does this have to do with poverty? People who live in unsafe buildings are more exposed to violence, stress, and health issues - all of which impede the ability of families to access important amenities (robust transportation, healthy commercial districts, good schools) and lead to higher health care costs.
7. As long as we're at it, in fact, why don't we make subsidized housing glorious? Instead of placing the responsibility for subsidized housing in the hands of private companies motivated by short-term greed, we should be taking steps to ensure that future builds prioritize long-term safety, aesthetics, and health. Appealing neighborhoods attract amenities and create educational and economic opportunities.
8. Maintain landlord accountability by guaranteeing the rights of renters to access legal remedies. As things currently stand, landlords who engage in exploitation (refusing to perform necessary repairs, imposing enormous late fines, engaging in punitive evictions) have many legal avenues for avoiding accountability, such as requiring as a condition of rental that rentees agree to resolve disputes via mediation - a process that can easily be manipulated to favor landlord interests.
9. Eliminate lead paint and lead pipes. Again, what does this have to do with poverty? Lead is isn't just any toxin - it's a neurotoxin. In children, continuous exposure to high levels of lead lowers overall IQ and contributes to higher rates of disruptive behaviour - factors that can impede the ability of these children to realize financial success as adults. And where are the highest levels of lead often found? In poor communities, where peeling paint and unmodernized plumbing systems are often the norm.
3. Access to Employment
1. Enforce a livable minimum wage and set limits on workarounds that allow employers to shirk benefits: limiting hours, requiring that employees work as independent contractors,  etc.  One thing that keeps poor people poor is that they are too often forced to pay out-of-pocket for benefits that wealthier people take for granted, such as subsidized health care. Also, while we're at it, we need to be aggressively prosecute companies found guilty of wage fraud, an injustice that specifically targets poor people because they lack the time, resources, or power to protect themselves.
2. Modify current laws that give employers wide license to quell worker's efforts to organize and collectively bargain. Contrary to popular belief, unionizing employees isn't proven to result in either higher prices or job loss - but it is proven to put money, benefits, and security in the pockets of workers. This likely explains why large employers and the Chambers of Commerce they sponsor continue to protect laws that make it as hard as possible for workers to engage in collective action.
3. Limit practices like just-in-time-scheduling and at-will employment. All employees deserve financial stability, but being able to anticipate revenue is especially critical for folks that are living paycheck-to-paycheck. Without this stability, workers can't effectively invest in their own futures.  
4. Eliminate predatory non-compete agreements. Employees need to be free to sell their services/expertise to the highest bidder, unencumbered by spurious non-compete agreements whose sole purpose is to frighten employees into staying where they are by "poisoning the well." 
5. Support and enforce pay equity to combat ongoing discrimination against populations most likely to experience poverty.  Politicians love talking about gender inequality and racial inequality, but no one's talking about the data that shows that people in poverty are paid less than wealthier colleagues with the same level of expertise. We need to close the pay gap that has poor people earning ~30% less than their more privileged peers.  
6. Open up more opportunities in high school for vocational training. ____________
7. Create opportunities for folks in prison to participate in vocational education, and create systems that place them in jobs with livable wages upon their release. Currently, jails are basically factories for generating poor people. Released convicts face job discrimination, housing discrimination, and are often estranged from family/community support due to prison "best practices" that, among other things, charge prisoners for phone calls to loved ones. We need programs that disrupt this cycle by focusing on equipping prisoners with the tools and resources they will need to generate wealth. 
4. Access to Benefits
1. Make the process for applying for benefits more accessible. If we're going to provide programs to support poverty, then let's at least make then accessible! Our current system is dogged by inconsistent information, inaccessible processes (often requiring access to computers, wifi, printers, and a high degree of computer literacy), and unconscionable processing delays. Many poor resort to hiring attorneys they can't afford to obtain rights that they are imminently qualified to receive - attorneys who then skim a portion of the awards for themselves. (Is this really how we want to be spending the tax dollars we earmark for poverty relief - making lawyers richer?) We need either to be reforming our current processes or at least providing free access to advocates who can help people in poverty navigate our current labyrinthian systems.
2. Eliminate penalties that dis-incent families. One tested way to build wealth is through collective living where individuals pool their financial resources, as happens when people marry or establish multi-generational households. However, our current benefits systems continue to provide higher benefits to single heads of household. 
3. Make child care affordable, available, and exceptional. Parents can't work unless they have someone to take care of their children, and they can't even begin to generate wealth if child care is so expensive, it's absorbing all their disposable income. Moreover, we need to make sure that the child care we provide isn't just babysitting, but proactively building the essential foundations for learning and future success: literacy, numeracy, and social/emotional intelligence. 
4. Make health care affordable, available, and exceptional. Recent legislation has addressed the imperative to subsidize care for the poor, but too many people who live just above the poverty line are unable to access these programs, forcing them to devote a disproportionate percentage of their disposable incomes on doctors, prescriptions, and medical supplies and thereby limiting their ability to build wealth. 
5. Provide guarantees access to paid medical leave and paid sick days. One of the many ways that we penalize poor people is by denying them paid sick days. Not only do minimum-way employers refuse paid leave, but currently they also have wide leverage to fire employees who have the temerity to ask for unpaid leave. We need to stop expecting people in poverty to tolerate inequities that would never be tolerated by their wealthier peers. 
6. Regularly audit states to ensure that grants to address poverty are actually being expended on poverty assistance. Way too much of the aid that the federal government gives to states for poverty relief ends up being spent on things that have little/nothing to do with poverty relief: pork projects, initiatives that advance political agendas. This needs to stop.
5. Potential Sources of Funding
1. Reconsider programs that reward wealth.  Provisions such as tax breaks for home ownership and inherited wealth tend to benefit those least in need of financial assistance. This has proved a hard thing to fix, not just because folks who are wealthy have the resources to sway legislators, but also because - in a country where everyone believes they have the potential to one day become wealthy (that pyramid scheme is sure to pay off one day!), even people currently living in poverty can be persuaded not to pass laws that may one day place limits on their own access to wealth. 
2. Track down tax cheaters and make them pay. Recently, the head of the IRS estimated that we are losing $1T in revenue due to tax cheaters, primarily multinational corporations and wealthy individuals. Imagine the poverty alleviation programs we could fund with that kind of money! 
3. Prioritize programs that help build wealth. To be clear, I'm not advocating shifting funds away from the programs that provide critical support to the poor: Earned Income Tax Credit, housing subsidies, WIC, etc. But I am advocating that we spend more time and treasure focusing on program that help the poor to build financial security and wealth. 

SOURCES: 

Desmond, Matthew. Poverty By America. Crown Publishing Group:New York. 2023.

Pathak, A and Ross, K. The Top 12 Solutions to Cut Poverty in the United States, 30 June 2021. Center for American Progress. Accessed Nov 2024 at https://www.americanprogress.org/article/top-12-solutions-cut-poverty-united-states/

Rappaport, Alan. Tax Cheats Cost the US $1T per year, IRS Chief Says. New York Times, 13 Oct 2021. https://www.nytimes.com/2021/04/13/business/irs-tax-gap.html

10+ Factors That Perpetuate Poverty in the United States

Like many Americans, I struggle to understand why a country as rich in resources and opportunities as the U.S. still has one of the highest poverty rates of any advanced country. So when I spotted Matthew Desmond's Poverty by America on bookshelves, I immediately bought myself a copy, not willing to wait the 2+ months to obtain one of the copies stocked by our local library system. (Because apparently I'm not the only one with similar questions!) Figured Desmond's credentials as an award winning author (his Evicted won a Pulitzer Prize), in addition to the book's hefty 76 pages of annotated footnotes, was likely to ensure a reasoned and data-supported analysis of the issue.

As I'd hoped, the first half of the book spoke directly to my question, addressing the various reasons that poverty persists in the U.S. These chapters left me appropriately enlightened and appalled. The second half of the book then went on to propose realistic solutions, one of which is, basically, "get the word out!" Desmond strongly believes that ongoing politic rhetoric, ignorance, and disinformation mask the fact that poverty reduction unites and benefits us all. For this reason, I'm hoping he won't mind if I use this blog post as a way to "spread the word" about the actual factors that contribute to endemic poverty in this nation, with an eye towards creating an informed populace that will demand that our elected officials support initiatives that lead to actual, lasting poverty emancipation. 

To be clear, the prose below is mine (I've summarized Desmond's main ideas in my own, much less artful/precise words), but the ideas and references are all Desmond's. If this topic intrigues you, I strongly urge you to go to the primary source, his Poverty by America, in order to access a wider, deeper, and much more informed analysis of the issues presented below. 

As the title suggests, am dedicating this blog post to a discussion of some of the factors that perpetuate poverty in the U.S. Look for my next blog post, in which I'll lay out "10+ Initiatives for Reducing Poverty in the United States," inspired by the latter chapter's of Desmond's narrative. A little hope to leaven the bleakness of the list below! 

10+ reasons that poverty is endemic in the U.S.:

1. It's profitable. The first thing to understand is that, here in the U.S., poverty is a profit industry. A partial list of some of the folks who profit:  
1. Landlords, who exploit the desperation of their impoverished customers, lackadaisical oversight, and laws very clearly weighted in their favor to charge above-market rates for often substandard housing. Turns out people will put up with a lot of inequality when their only other option is homelessness. 
2. Banks, who profit from overdraft and other fees.
3. Predatory lenders (payday loan companies, pawnshops) that exploit the fact that many poor people don't have sufficient cash flow to maintain bank accounts and are desperate enough to entangle themselves in loans with interest rates of up to 500%.
4. Lawyers hired by the poor in order to obtain the government aid (SSDI, SSI) that they are legally entitled to - lawyers only too happy to provide their services on spec in exchange a portion of the funds their clients are awarded.
5. Politicians, who divert federal funding meant for the poor to fund their own pork projects (ex: concerts, stadiums) or to forward their own political agendas (ex: abstinence education in schools). (Do a quick internet search on how Mississippi used welfare money to pay for a volleyball complex and concerts by a gospel singer!) 
6. Employers, who understand that the easiest way to motivate workers to accept unacceptable jobs (low pay, ruinous hours, unpaid overtime, unsafe conditions) is to make sure their only other choice is hunger and homelessness.
7. "Sin industries" such as tobacco, alcohol, gambling, and the lottery, that exploit the self-destructive behaviours of desperate populations.
2. Predatory housing. Many poor in America pay more in rent than they would in mortgage payments. So why aren't they buying homes - one of the most reliable paths to wealth generation in this country? One reason: banks don't make enough profit off of small mortgages to make it worth their while. Another reason: many poor are required to conduct their transactions in cash (landlords/purchasers won't accept any other form of payment), making it difficult for them to establish credit.  
3. Exclusionary zoning laws. When redlining was nixed, many cities simply switched to exclusionary zoning, figuring that if they couldn't keep "undesirable elements" out, then they could at least exclude the types of housing that attract "undesirable elements" - apartments, subsidized housing. These zoning laws have the effect of concentrating people living in poverty in neighborhoods that are underserved by commercial and public infrastructure, which in turn exposes them to factors that perpetuate poverty, including: 
1. Over-priced food. In neighborhoods with no grocery stores, people can't leverage warehouse pricing or comparison shop for good deals. And dollar stores, despite their name, are no bargain, forcing people to pay $1 for products that cost much less in other outlets. 
2. Under-performing schools. Schools in poor neighborhoods have difficulty attracting the programs, funding, and teachers that schools in wealthier neighborhoods insist upon. 
4. We make accessing benefits too hard. Contrary to the opinion of many Americans, our country's poor are actually pretty bad at being welfare dependent. Every year, billions of dollars remain unclaimed by people who are qualified for the benefits. Why?
1. We make it extremely hard for people to apply for benefits. Forms are complicated, directions are wordy, guidance is contradictory, and the process often requires access to the internet, overlooking the fact that poor populations often have limited access to the web (no computers, cellphones with expensive data plans). 
2. Our current administrative processes are so inefficient, underfunded, and overwhelmed, qualified applicants are often required to reapply multiple times before being found eligible. All too often, the only recourse the poor have is to hire a lawyer to advocate for them, which means forking over 25% of what they win to lawyers who are most definitely *not* poor.
5. Companies are incented to exploit workers. Shareholders and the stock markets reward profit without much caring how that profit is extracted. One of the easiest ways to increase profit? Reduce labor costs, a process that is facilitated by:
1. A minimum wage that ensures workers remain susceptible to hunger and homelessness, incenting them to continue working no matter how difficult/unjust the conditions.
2. Exploitation of workers (often ELLs or undereducated) either unfamiliar with their legally protected rights or unwilling/unable to demand them. 
3. Mandatory non-compete clauses that limit the ability of workers to sell their skills to the highest bidder. Your employer at Jiffy Lube is cheating you out of overtime? That non-compete agreement they forced you to sign as a condition of employment means you can't apply for a similar job with a competitor.  To be clear, we're not talking about tech workers here: we're talking about hair stylists, factory workers, fast food workers, car salesmen, and nurses. These employers aren't concerned about proprietary information; they're using non-competes as a way to trap employees and limit wage competition. 
4. A legal system that is designed to discourage collective action through laws that give employers wide scope to discourage unionization and punish potential organizers. 
6. Unfair taxation policies. While our income tax is ostensibly "progressive" (based on income level), many taxes - sales taxes, property taxes - are not. In fact, the % of overall income that poor people pay in taxes ends up being almost as high as what our wealthiest citizens pay. (If you're thinking that it feels counterproductive to give poor people public assistance and then collect 25% of it back in taxes, then you're right.)
7. Our health care situation. Obamacare and Medicare provide some coverage, but few of these policies are free or comprehensive, and people who live on the margins of poverty - just enough to get by - often don't qualify for the subsidies they need. Exacerbating this situation is the fact that people who live in poverty often have more extreme, endemic health issues, due to (among other factors) poor nutrition, lack of appropriate preventative care, and inability to pay for prescriptions over time. 
8. Our child care situation. It's impossible to overestimate the impact of our country's child care system on the poor. Child care can consume up to 50% of the take home earnings generated by a typical minimum wage job. Assistance programs that require single parents to work in order to qualify for benefits are ensuring that those single parents will remain impoverished. (Meanwhile, due to our broken and politicized healthcare system, women who wish to delay pregnancy often lack the means to maintain sustained access to birth control.) 
9. The way we do jail. Jail may or may not rehabilitate prisoners, but it does pretty much doom them to lives of poverty. Untrained in any usable skills, disqualified by employers reluctant to hire them, often disconnected from the support system of their families by policies that house prisoners in jails far removed from their homes & restrict phone calls ... these individuals face often insurmountable odds when it comes to building wealth. 
10. Programs that accommodate poverty without alleviating it. Too many of our social programs - including food stamps, housing assistance, and health care - are designed to help the poor survive rather than help them build wealth. 
11. Absence of choice. One of the least understood but most insidious factors trapping people in poverty: absence of choice. A huge part of being an efficient consumer is being able to avail oneself of choice:  the choice to join a discount warehouse, to visit a doctor that's preapproved by your insurance, to select a bank that doesn't impose steep fees, to shop for bargains utilizing information accessible via the internet. But these options often aren't available to people who lack access to reliable transportation and/or internet access, who can't afford to take time off work, or who are simply too exhausted after their 60-80hr work weeks to engaged in informed consumerism.

Book Look: A Fierce Discontent, The Rise and Fall of the Progressive Movement in America, by Michael McGerr

 Enjoyed this readable account of America's first (of many) flirtations with Progressivism, which explores everything from politics to economics, society, and culture. McGerr never strays far from his central thesis - that the Progressive movement represented a shift from individualism ("Anything can be achieved through hard work") to collectivism ("We have a responsibility to our fellow man, especially the ones that have no power"), from Victorianism (traditional domesticity) to modernism (self-actualization), with a heavy emphasis on solidifying the power, prosperity, and moral compass of the middle class. This hypothesis provides a useful lens for contextualizing the many subtopics that this book addresses, which include:

* The Rise of Progressivism (the social and cultural forces that triggered dissatisfaction)
* Transforming Americans (the Progressives' attempts to regulate behaviour and curtail exploitation)
* Ending class conflict (their attempts to empower workers through collective organization)
* Controlling big business (their efforts to reign in the unethical practices of monopolies)
* Segregation (the extent of their many failures, and the reasons for them)
* Technology & entertainment (how the rise of individual pleasures undermined the Progressive agenda)
* How WW1 brough Progressivism to an end (at least temporarily, as the US has continually lurched between Progressivism and Conservatism ever since)

Each chapter begins by focusing on the story of an individual, before expanding to explore the wider issues and then eventually circling back to reflect on the implications on the individual whose story began the discussion, a technique that adds a level of personalization that these kinds of historical analyses often lack.

There's a staggering amount of research here, but the author does a good job of keeping things moving and resists the urge to get too far down in the weeds. McGerr lacks the storytelling chops of a Doris Kearns Goodwin or David McCullough, but I still ended up reading this whole thing in just three long sessions because the subject matter is so fascinating ... and so timely. Looking for insights into potential outcomes of our recent jarring cycle of progressivism --> conservativism? unregulated capitalism vs. social justice? nativism vs. assimilation? The impact of technological innovation on culture? Looking back to what happened in the past is always a great place to start.

Book Look: Parable of the Sower, by Octavia E. Butler

There are two major storylines here: (1) the gradual collapse of American civilization in the face of a climate crisis, and (2) the establishment of a new religion. This first book in Butler's Earthseed series focuses on the climate crisis, the second (I'm inferring) will get into more detail about Earthseed, the religion being propagated (sowed) by the novel's protagonist, Lauren Olamani.

For a book written in 1993, Butler's projection of the impacts of a climate crisis in the U.S. are chillingly in-line with current forecasts: water shortages, food shortages, high prices, eroding shorelines, and especially the disproportionately appalling impacts on marginalized populations: the poor, minorities, immigrants, etc. Butler's U.S. isn't yet a lawless dystopia - there's still a president, police forces, colleges, and big box stores, etc. - but it's well on the way to becoming one, especially for those unable to afford walled communities, food, water, and armed guards. While the novel makes clear that some states are faring better than others, Butler's southern California is well on its way to dystopian anarchy, overrun by bloodthirsty gangs, rampant drug use (including abuse of a particularly horrific substance that causes users to become pyromaniacs), wanton crime (rape, pillage, murder, cannibalism), and legalized indentured servitude/slavery.

Into this reality is born Lauren Olamani, the precocious, mixed-race daughter of college-educated preacher. As the novel begins, the creeping dystopia that has already ravaged the lower classes is beginning to claim middle class communities like the one Lauren is living in, eventually forcing her to take to the road in search of a (relatively) safe place to settle and propagate her "new religion," which she calls Earthseed - a sort of Darwinian-survival-of-the-best-adapted meets Dale-Carnagie-cult-of-affirmation mashup. Along the way she and her rag-tag community of friends/followers face the expected perils: murderous thieves, wild dogs, thirst, fire, etc.

All of which makes for an entertaining read as long as you focus on the characters (engaging) and plot (brisk), because Olamani's Earthseed credo - while good enough for plot purposes - is laced with logical fallacies and inconsistencies; no great philosophical truths will be revealed. Her depiction of the gradual degradation of civilized norms must have seemed pretty extreme and unlikely back in 1993 when this was first published. However, it's hard to read this now without seeing parallels between events in the novel and current headlines - the carnage caused by illegal drug use (opioids laced with fentanyl), the rise in overt acts of racial hatred, the social impacts of unbridled capitalism, the political manipulations of corrupt politicians, the looming climate crisis - and wondering just how extreme Butler's vision may be.

But then, if the whole idea of the science fiction genre is to analyze current scientific/cultural trends and then extrapolate possible outcomes of these trends into the future, then maybe thinking about how we are going to shape for ourselves a different future than the horrific one depicted here is precisely what we should be doing.

Are You a Democrat, a Republican, or a MAGA Republican?

Are you a Democrat, a Republican, or a MAGA Republican? Enjoy this convenient guide that clarifies the subtle differences! 

DEMOCRAT	REPUBLICAN	MAGA REPUBLICAN
Some rights are so essential, the federal government needs to protect access to them	Rights not specifically granted to the federal government in the U.S. Constitution should be left to states to decide	In general, no government has the right to tell people what they can and can't do. (So keep your hands off our gas stoves!)
Republicans are misguided	Democrats are misguided	Democrats engage in child sex trafficking and harvest babies for food
Illegal immigration is  unfortunate, but in general immigrants don’t pose a threat to the U.S.	Illegal immigration is a threat to U.S. security	The vast majority of illegal immigrants are either terrorists, criminals, disease carriers, here to steal our jobs, or here to live a life of luxury sponging off our social services. They deserve to be caged like the animals that they are.
Unbridled capitalism creates social injustice; regulations and unions are necessary to protect citizens from capitalism’s excesses	Financial markets operate best when freed of unnecessary regulation; most market systems work better if privatized.	Unbridled capitalism is what makes American great; if people are stupid enough to allow themselves to be exploited, that’s on them
Spending whatever is necessary to protect U.S. citizens is more important than fiscal responsibility	Federal expenditures should be moderate and fiscally responsible	The federal government should be fiscally responsible but also fund all the social services that directly benefit us.
“Traditional family values” perpetuate racial, economic, and gender injustice; basic humanism should be the moral code of all Americans	Traditional family values should be the fixed moral code of all Americans	If traditional family values perpetuate racial, economic, and gender injustice, then that's   because God wants things to stay that way.
If you increase taxes on the rich, the poor will benefit	If you reduce taxes on the rich, the poor will benefit	One day we’re going to be rich, because that’s the American Way; when we make it, we don’t want the government taking our money
America is the greatest country in the world, but we also have flaws we need to address	America is the greatest country in the world, and anyone who says otherwise is woke	America is the greatest country in the world, and anyone who says otherwise is a traitor
The best way to win wars is to avoid them	The best way to win wars is to maintain the largest, most lethal military force in the world	The best way to win wars is to nuke our enemies into oblivion
The U.S. government has an obligation to protect those who can’t protect themselves	People should pull themselves up by their bootstraps; social safety nets are morally corrupting	Social Darwinism, baby – only the strongest deserve to survive.
Human life begins at birth	Human life begins at conception	Nature intended women to be baby incubators & caregivers; any roles or rights that might interfere with this function should be terminated
The most effective way to address crime is via a combination of prevention, punishment, and rehabilitation	The most effective way to address crime is punishment	The only safe criminal is a jailed criminal – or, better yet, a dead criminal.
Our nation's energy needs should be weighed against potential environmental impacts	Our nation's energy needs should be weighed against potential economic impacts	As the superior race here on Earth, it’s our right to do whatever the hell we want with the natural resources we harvest.
Climate change is an existential threat	Climate change isn’t the threat that some make it out to be	Climate change is fake
The right to bear arms and to use them to defend oneself is conditional.	The right to bear arms and to use them to defend oneself is unconditional.	The right to bear arms and to use them for pretty much any purpose, however reckless or irrational, is unconditional.
Health care is a human right, and therefore should be guaranteed by the federal government.	Individual should bear the responsibility of securing their own health care from private providers, ensuring that people who can’t afford health care don’t sponge off those who can.	Health care is nice, but if people have to die in order to protect our country from becoming a socialist state, then so be it.
Freedom of religion means that no one should be allowed to impose their religious beliefs on others	Freedom of religion means that no one should be allowed to impose their religious beliefs on others - except Christians, because the founding fathers intended the U.S. to be a Christian nation	Freedom of religion means that Christians should feel free to discriminate against all religions that aren’t Christian
Marriage is a union between two people who love each other, regardless of gender	Marriage is a union between a man and a woman	Marriage is a union between a man and a woman in which the woman is subservient to the man’s will
With respect to international affairs, the U.S. needs to weigh its own interests against the need to guarantee essential human rights around the world	With respect to international affairs, the U.S.’s priority should always be to protect its own interests	America should take care of Americans, and leave the rest of the world the hell alone
The U.S. voting system is resilient to fraud; the ultimate objective should be to encourage everyone to participate in the process	The U.S. voting system is vulnerable to fraud; the ultimate objective should be to allow people who want to vote to do so, within reason	The U.S. voting systems is hopelessly corrupted, as proven by the fact that the our candidates keep losing. The ultimate objective is to ensure that our candidates win by whatever means necessary.

30+ Reasons Teachers Feel Disrespected

Wondering why teachers are leaving the profession like rats abandoning a sinking ship? The answer can be summed up in one word: DISRESPECT.  Teachers have always endured a modicum of disrespect, but the separate sources of disrespect have exponentially multiplied over the past few years. Here are just a few of the reasons teachers aren't feeling a whole lot of love just now ....

1. Our pay is not commensurate with other professionals who are expected to acquire an equivalent amount of education. In addition to a college degree in the content area we intend to teach, most districts require that we obtain a teaching degree. In most other fields a masters degree earns you more money; in teaching, however, it's seen as a prerequisite for accepting even the lowest paid positions. Try explaining that to your college loan company.
2. Our pay often fails to provide a living wage. It's hard to feel respected when people don't seem to care that we can't actually live on what we're paid
3. Our pay raises are at the whim of local governments.  Unlike other careers, where raises are generally consistent, teachers live in a constant state of uncertainty. Often, our salaries are "frozen" for years at a time, or even slashed. Oh, and forget the concept of "reward for effort." There is absolutely zero link between job performance and renumeration - no matter how hard we work, no matter how brilliant we are, our renumeration will be based solely on our years of service.  
4. Being expected to either pay for the supplies we need out of our own pocket or to do without. Are nurses required to buy PJs for their patients? Are waiters expected to supply their customers' tableware? Why are teachers expected to buy pencils, erasers, notebooks, etc. so that their students can participate in learning? 
5. Politicians using teachers to score points by accusing us of all manner of improprieties: liberal agendas, grooming, godlessness. I get that one of the cheapest ways to win votes is to make voters afraid of something and then promising to fix it, but teachers are tired of being the bogeymen in this scenario. 
6. Politicians and school boards treating us as engines of indoctrination. Teachers have ethics, standards, and measures of professionalism, one of the most important of which is that we teach actual truth. Teach "alternative facts" at home if you must, but stop demanding (at the risk of firing) that teachers engage in this sort of indoctrination.
7. Politicians feeling free to trade our actual lives for a few votes. Nothing makes a teacher feel valued like being told that their lives are worth less than someone's political career. 
8. Politicians who think that education can be run like a commercial venture, disregarding the fact that no commercial venture on earth is required to entirely disregard the quality of their raw materials while simultaneously guaranteeing the quality of 100% of the product
9. Politicians who compare charter schools to public schools, pretending that this is an apples to apples comparison in spite of the proven disparities in hours spent per student, parent engagement, and student ability/motivation
10. Citizens who claim they value education, but then consistently vote against school bonds or taxes that would fund education
11. Students who, having learned their social skills from social media trolls during Covid, feel empowered to treat their teachers with profound disrespect
12. Working conditions that range from uncomfortable (broken windows that let in heat/cold) to dangerous (mold)
13. Virtually no protection from abuse (cursing, physical harm, stalking) at the hand of students or parents
14. Reformers (especially eccentric tech billionaires) who believe that they understand education better than thousands of actual professional educators
15. Reformers who believe that there's a "one size fits all" approach that will work for all students, disregarding the frankly obvious fact that no two kids learn the same way
16. Reformers who think that standardized tests are accurate measures of student ability
17. School administrators who force us to adopt their "educational fad of the year" (often tied to the latest educational best-seller), regardless of the whether data exists to prove that the method is in any way superior to practices currently in place.
18. School administrators who that micro-manage their staff. Too many administrators seem to assume that their job is to tell teachers how to do their job rather than facilitate the ability of teachers to do their job. Teachers deserve to be treated as the competent professionals that they are, not junior sales associates. 
19. School administrators who continue to saddle teachers with new responsibilities (address learning loss, transition to blended learning, teach SEL, do more data analysis, etc.) while failing to relieve us of the burden of existing responsibilities. Teachers are resilient, but all humans have limits. You simply cannot keep piling bricks on a horse and expect it to keep moving forward (much less at a gallop). 
20. School administrators who refuse our requests for days off because they can't find subs. I'm not just talking about vacations here ... I'm talking about teachers being denied the leave they need to receive critical care, teachers who have been denied leave for important family events (like graduations), teachers who have been asked to provide sub plans *while in labor.*  Politicians playing with our lives is bad enough; admins refusing to let us live our lives, a whole different level of disrespect.
21. School administrators who expect us to constantly do more with less ... like spending more time building relationships with students while simultaneously increasing our class sizes, or requiring that we use new technology while taking away the professional development days we need to learn how to use new apps.
22. Members of the general public who treat teachers like we're getting paid to do nothing over the summer. The vast majority of us are on contracts that pay us for exactly the number of days that we work and no more. Moreover, we often spend our summers engaged in entirely un-renumerated school-related work, like redesigning lesson plans or engaging in professional development
23. Members of the general public that treat teachers' unions as if their purpose for being is to promote political agendas instead of ensuring that teachers are treated fairly. Apparently teaching being the one career where teachers - lousy, lazy, coddled bums that they are - deserve all the exploitation they get?
24. Parents who treat us as free daycare, unwilling to support their students' education in any way. At least pretend to take your child's future as seriously as we do.
25. Helicopter parents who treat us like idiots or assume we have some sort grudge against their students.  We especially appreciate the incivility of parents who send daily emails that rob us of our planning time, who expect us to provide their students with free one-on-one tutoring, or who expect us to respond to their communiques evenings & weekends.
26. Parents with unrealistic expectations: who expect us to "cure" their childrens' learning disabilities, teach them manners, oversee their social lives, or ensure that their child receives a degree even if they were absent 70% of instructional periods. 
27. A general underappreciation for the actual number of hours that teachers work in the course of a week. You're tired after your 40 day workweek? Try 10hr days + another 8hrs of grading or admin work over the weekend ... ~60hrs per week. And those hours don't come out of TV time - most teachers have to carve them out of "hide": time that they could have been spending with their own children and families.
28. A general underappreciation for the huge amount of extra-curricular skills we are expected to teach: social skills, career skills, administration functioning, self-regulation, manners, leadership, responsibility, citizenship, resiliency ....
29. People who genuinely think that "those who can't do, teach" or who assume that teaching requires no particular skill - that, in fact, any veteran or "Teach for America" college graduate can do it. Imagine the humiliation of being repeatedly told that the job you trained your whole life to perform could be done just as well by amateurs.
30. People who think teachers shouldn't care about material things because our reward is the satisfaction of "making a difference in the life of a child." We're human beings, not martyrs. We may enjoy our jobs, but we're not interested in sacrificing our lives to the needs of other people's students.
31. People who tell us we're stupid to have become teachers, and that if we're disrespected then it's no more than we deserve for being foolish enough to have chosen teaching over more lucrative careers. Not all careers are measured by financial reward.

The Death of Public Education

It will start in one of the Southern states. One of those states that always comes in near the bottom of all those well-publicized, all-important lists of educational effectiveness: the annual “Student Performance on Standardized Tests” list, the “Percent of High School Students Who Graduate” list, the “Money Spent Per Student” list.

One of those states that has a history of struggling to keep teachers because the job conditions are onerous (huge classes, no support services, hours of unpaid extra duties, unsafe classrooms), because they aren’t being paid a living wage (also in no way commensurate with the level of education required), and because the teachers have grown tired of being used as political punching bags (like being forced to teach, unvaccinated and unmasked, during a pandemic).

One of those states that barely skirts past mandatory federa

l guidelines by engaging in such manipulations as lowering the difficulty of standardizing tests, inflating grades, and exploiting loopholes that allow them to avoid testing struggling students – especially English language learners and students with special needs.

One of those states that, frankly, would be okay with a less populated citizenry, because uneducated voters are easier to manipulate, which comes in handy when you need to persuade people that building roads through long-established minority neighborhoods is necessary, that brown tapwater that smells of sulfur is nothing to worry about, or that there’s nothing wrong with a governor accepting huge donations from companies that are later awarded sole source contracts for big state-funded initiatives.

One of those states that teachers are abandoning not in a steady stream, but in a tsunami-like wave.

Which, ironically, will provide the state with the cover they need to announce that they are moving to a four day school week, because in times of emergency one has to take drastic measures, and no one wants to cut electives like music, art, and health, but when you get right down to it, schools have gotten too involved in social issues anyway – like teaching that evolution is real, that climate change is happening, and that U.S. history contains fairly significant incidents of social injustice – so, really, it’s a mark of political and moral leadership to be reigning in the excesses of public education by limiting it to readin’, writin’, and ‘rithmatic, right?

Which will last for a while until, facing increasingly serious teacher retention issues, the state announces that they will be moving some more rural students onto virtual learning, because in times of emergency one has to take drastic measures, and no one wants to single out kids who live in underserved rural areas but, hey, those districts are already safely gerrymandered and with all the money that the state saves on efficiencies – shutting down schools, selling school buses, reducing free meal programs – it’s really a mark of smart governing to be reclaiming this money and directing it towards more urgent issues, like giving tax breaks to chemical and petroleum companies with reprehensible environmental records so that they’ll provide the kind of low-paying jobs perfect for people who never finished high school.  It’s a win-win!

Which will last for a while until, now facing whole-scale failure on every possible measure (standardized test scores, high school graduation rate, students mental health, teacher retention, etc.), the state announces that they will be moving everyone to charter schools, because in times of emergency one has to take drastic measures and what better way to fix broken schools than to turn them over to businessmen who know how to get things done better than a bunch of radicalized teachers, union-controlled school boards, and godless curriculum experts?  Sure, no one wants to give up on public schools, but given that private schools have so much more leeway to hire cheap (albeit wholly unqualified) teachers, omit content that may offend local citizens, ban books, openly teach religion, adopt factually dubious textbooks, fudge test scores, circumvent federal laws protecting the rights of students with special needs, and refuse outright to educate anyone with dubious citizenship status  – then, really, isn’t this the “big government, keep your hands off my children!” leadership that the citizens have been asking for all along?  

Which will last for a while until other states - states that have heretofore been watching from the sidelines – announce that they too will moving everyone to charter schools, because in times of emergency one has to take drastic measures and what could be bolder than copying what other states have already done? Sure, no one wants to be seen as racing to the bottom, but given that other states have already embraced the model and getting rid of public schools frees up a lot of money to fight court cases brought by outraged stakeholders, then, really, isn’t it time to embrace the idea that the way we deliver public education needs to change to meet the needs of a new century?

Sure, there will be complaints. Complaints from liberals concerned that charter schools undermine the purpose of education, which is to ensure an informed and considered electorate. Complaints from minorities claiming that charter school entrance policies effectively restore segregation, discretely sorting students in ways that abet and reinforce racial homogeneity. Complaints from the families of students with special needs claiming that charter schools either (1) refuse to admit their students or (2) refuse to provide them a fair and appropriate education. However, the Supreme Court is now stacked with justices prepared to address these complaints by overturning misguided past rulings and asserting that the federal government really has no role to play in how states choose to provide education, that racially segregated schools can be equal (if parents rather than laws are doing the selecting), and that special needs students shouldn’t have to be tested (if states don't think it's necessary).  After all, hasn't the Supreme Court has already decided that racism has been extinguished, that judicial precedent is immaterial, and that the federal government should get out the business of protecting individual rights?

But just think of the benefits! No more parents complaining about teacher indoctrination, because parents will have the power to pick a school that delivers exactly the level and manner of indoctrination they demand.  What with liberal charter schools for liberals and conservative charter schools for conservatives, we're eliminating the need to acknowledge (much less evaluate) opposing viewpoints ... think of the unpleasantness this will save!  Also, there will be no more bickering over school boards or school superintendents, because charter schools operate independently of virtually any oversight.  No more teacher shortages, because a certain fairly stable number of high school graduates are always going to prefer teaching over careers in fast food, and since all the curriculum is going to be scripted and/or online anyway, they don’t actually have to know anything. No more worrying about troubling educational gaps between majority and minority populations, because charter schools have proven themselves adept at manipulating data. Even students benefit, because think of the stress that will melt away when they no longer have to demonstrate any actual content mastery in order to earn As.

Best of all, the politicians finally get what they’ve wanted all along – a populace that’s ignorant of history (and therefore contentedly clueless as we repeat the errors of the past), ignorant of science (and therefore content to trust politicians to protect their health, their communities, and their planet), ignorant of math (and therefore happy to vote for regressive tax structures that profit everyone but themselves), incapable of deep reading (and therefore unable to access any lessons literature might have to teach), ignorant of human rights (and therefore complacent when those rights are gradually stripped away), and marvelously, blissfully unable to engage in critical thinking, making them delightfully easy to manipulate.  

For those of you who have gotten this far and are now wondering: what is this woman’s problem? Has she been reading too much dystopian fiction? Overdoing the doomscrolling? All I ask is that, before you judge, go back through the steps in the process I’ve laid out and tell me precisely where you think my reasoning goes astray. Tell me where the political support will come from to protect public schools, where the institutional changes will come from to keep teachers from fleeing the field, where the motivation will come from to save a system that almost everyone seems to believe is either inefficient, out-of-touch, inept, unjust, unnecessary, godless, biased, bloated, bureaucratic, or a bastion of indoctrination. Convince me, if you can, that this clumsy, cumbersome and yet profoundly noble ideal, the right to a fair and equal publicly-funded education, so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure against the rapidly advancing forces of political immorality, unconstrained capitalism, ideological extremism, and unravelling civil protections.

Please, convince me. Because God knows this isn’t the future I want – it’s barely a future I can endure contemplating - but it is the future that I have begun bracing myself for.