Al Goodwyn Editorial Cartoons by Al Goodwyn for August 12, 2022

Try paying them more and insulting them less. And keep Nazi fools off of school boards.

What else does she need?

How about a country that values the lives of children over the “right” to buy the kinds of guns that only military personnel should have access to, without having to prove sanity or competency, in which to go to school?

When they value teachers as much as they value sports and entertainment figures, that might change. Sports and entertainment figures might affect people for a couple of hours, but teachers affect people for a lifetime. It’s about time we treat them like that instead of underpaid weekday babysitters.

To this day, I don’t understand why anybody would ever want to teach. It is the least valued profession in this country.

When they treat teachers like this, what do you expect. School took pictures down of civil rights leaders.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/news.yahoo.com/amphtml/florida-teacher-quits-complains-staff-045338975.html

What you need is good quality teachers

Adolph and his lot have relentlessly demeaned teachers, attacked education, and portrayed schools as targets and failures. They want to allow teachers to shoot and to disallow them to speak. They support laws to harass, dismiss, sue, and fine teachers who do not conform to conservative ideology. Now he wonders why capable, intelligent people will not willingly stand against the wall in front of the firing squads of nuts he has helped inflame?

It’s kind of a tired trope when older teachers say that they would not want to start teaching today. That said, I would not want to start teaching today. Historically, the US has had an anti-intellectual, anti-teacher bias. I think it’s due to the fact that it was (and is?) primarily a female dominated profession. Add in the “you have summers off” (in my 32+ years, I don’t ever remember a summer off… must be those “other” teachers) and that goes a long way to explain why so many have negative feelings towards the profession.

What I think has changed recently, is the right-wing drive to “save” at the expense of teachers. When Act 10 passed here in WI, I read an article from some right-wing think tank that said the goal was to have teachers stay seven years. Just cycle them through. Then, there’s no accumulation of benefits (especially pensions), no institutional knowledge, etc. Here, their wish is coming to fruition. Add in the very recent slanderous personal attacks (I get one almost daily from a commenter here), the vastly increased required bureaucracy to document EVERYTHING that was done, is done and is going to be done and the desire for many young people to see immediate results (sometimes does, most times doesn’t happen for teachers) and you have a recipe for the current teacher shortage.

I would like to see some of the “expert” commenters here, try their hand at teaching. Alleviate the shortage!!! Substitute teachers are in even shorter supply and you only need a bachelor’s degree (here). Daily pay is still mostly OK. C’mon… see how easy it is!!!

We don’t have a teacher shortage.

We don’t have a housing shortage.

We don’t have a labor shortage.

We don’t have a food shortage.

We don’t have a healthcare shortage.

We have a billionaire excess whobuy politicians to deny us these basic human rights.

It’s a “valuing people” shortage. repug nirvana.

Mr. Goodwyn might wish to make a ’toon about just why teachers are quitting: horrible pay, incredibly long hours, curricula (manufactured by for-profit corporations) which cannot be altered, school-boards dominated by fundigelical fascists who demand that science be replaced by creationism and history by hagiography.

et myriad cetera

fusilier

James 2:24

Maybe if we paid teachers what they were actually worth and allowed them to actually teach real subjects and real skills than there would be a need for so many teachers? What is really ironic is the cartoonist supports a political party and ideology that intends to make sure that teachers do not actually teach by dictating to the teachers what they can and cannot teach. Moreover, he supports a political party actively trying to prevent students and scholars from accessing information and ideas in things such as college and university libraries’ databases and academic journals because they fear that these ideas that students are exposed to pose as threat to their elite status, power, and standing at the top of society and their ability to dictate and control the masses. This has been a current theme since the United States was still a part of the British Empire. Why do you think slaves were not allowed to read or write? Why do you think Jefferson absolutely despised Phyillis Wheatley and refused to recognize her talent (or any black talent really) as a poet? White American male freedom and republican ideology, as Edmund S. Morgan, and a host of others, argued so long ago, is built on the unfreedom of blacks, women, and other minorities. Always has been. The historical record, if you care to examine it, bares this out.

When you guys stop using education as a way to score points for your elections, maybe more people will want to teach. As it is you’ve accused us of teaching kids to hate America, grooming them for sexual exploitation, being cowards for being concerned about teaching in an epidemic, expecting us to take a bullet because you refuse to deal with gun violence, being ineffectual, being over paid, ect, etc, etc.

In short America does not respect teachers (that goes for both side of the political aisle, BTW) but you’re surprised when no one wants to teach.

Gee, Goodwyn. What could be causing teachers to quit? Could it be Qpublicans breathing down their necks? Could it be threats from MAGA parents? Could it be ignorami telling them what they can and can’t teach? Could it be low pay? Could it be being asked to wear a gun to work? Could it be school shootings? WHAT EVER could it be? Couldn’t possibly be any of these things that you apparently think are OK, could it?

Hated Professors that told you that you would need several expensive books for the class and never used them.

Goodwyn draws a cartoon celebrating the shortage of teachers.

Part of the Republican master plan to destroy democracy in America. A big step is elimination of all public schools.

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Republicans don’t believe in public anything. Not public schools, not the EPA, not public health agencies, not the department of agriculture, not the national weather service, not the post office, not the FDA, not health care of any kind, especially Medicare, not Social Security.

ALL those things must be privatized, according to Republicans.

They will get around to privatizing highways in due time.

Firearms training?

You mean the people that are underpaid for the amount sh*t thrown at them?

Republicans to stop stonewalling fully funding Public Education, by stealing tax money for private for profit and religious schools.

Hey Goodwyn, why don’t you try becoming a teaching assistant and sed see how little they’re paid for what they are expected to do. Oh, I forgot, you only know how to criticize.

Magas don’t give a crap, they want to give tax dollars to private religious schools.

When you value a teacher as much as you value a fool who can throw a ball, we won’t have a teacher shortage.

Gee, perhaps if we paid these highly educated and trained professionals dedicated to their students a decent living….

This country has always valued profits over human lives. The irony is that we have this situation in what is supposed to be a civil society. Most American think they are Christians too.

If ALL the ILLEGAL’s where sent back, there would be Lot’s of teachers

@Patjade- You are so right, Pat! I’ve played and been involved in basketball for a little over 50 years and believe me, many of these guys today are nothing but overpaid crybabies! Including LeBron James! Him and many of these guys today could not have withstood the physical play of the 90s during the Michael Jordan/Patrick Ewing wars! And as for the teachers, let’s not forget not only the disciplinary problems many of them face, but the learning curves they have to deal with. It’s hard especially dealing with a teenager when you find out that they were pushed through the system by given underserved decent grades so that their teachers wouldn’t have the nightmare of them getting left back and possibly being in their class again! I once knew a boy when I was growing up who told me that he got left back twice in the third grade! I’m like WOW!! How did he do that?? Aside from most likely non parental involvement.

Charter schools! Parochial schools! They have curriculum and teachers that care!