Repeatedly, we’ve been told that “Obamacare” will discourage sharp, motivated professionals from becoming doctors. That even though it makes no mention of capping the salary a doctor can make, young people will be so dismayed at any type of regulation to the health insurance market they won’t want to go to school to become one of the wealthiest professions in America.
But what about teachers? Won’t the GOP’s onslaught of attacks on teachers discourage our best, brightest, and most motivated from entering the field of education?
Ever since the Tea Party coup of last year’s midterm elections, it’s been one attack on teachers after another. All across the country, we’ve seen Republican governors and state legislatures cut funds to public education (Florida, Michigan, Ohio, Alabama, Wisconsin, etc.), end collective bargaining for teacher unions (Wisconsin, Ohio), try to cut teacher benefits (all the states mentioned by now and more), get rid of tenure (Alabama), and generally target teachers in different pieces of legislation. They’re treating teachers like they’re criminals undeserving of any perks, but Obamacare making insurance companies take people with pre-existing conditions is tyranny for doctors?
The worst part is the pressure for veteran teachers to step down, under bogus claims that they’re “too old” or “incompetent” when really they’re more expensive. They want to hire some green turd from Teach for America to take the place of someone who’s taught in a school district and knows the culture their whole life. The bigger problem is forcing older teachers out to put cheaper teachers in may not work for many more years. There may be no smart, remotely good younger people with teaching degrees to replace them with.
I mean, seeing the never ending bombardment of attacks on teacher tenure, retirement, health insurance benefits, unions, and pay (all of it under the guise of stopping lay offs but there were still mass layoffs in my home state of Alabama) would make any young person think twice about becoming a teacher when they can earn vastly more with the same level of education at a corporation. I know it makes me think twice about going to school to become a teacher for thirty years before I can retire, when there may be no retirement, no health insurance I don’t pay for entirely my self, and the average pay is 25,000 a year.
And maybe that’s what Republicans–a party that has never met a public school they wouldn’t replace with a private one–really want: the collapse of our entire public education system. Every year schools that are already underfunded have to fight tooth and nail for every dollar they get over charter schools or private school vouchers (Republican’s plan to “fix” public education, by letting it fail apart and make way for private schools) and unions do the same for teacher salaries.
By setting such restrictions on teachers, Republicans are doing exactly what they said “Obamacare” would do for doctors, and it ain’t been pretty to watch already underpaid schoolteachers scramble to protect their livelihoods. The GOP might be okay with young people going into business instead of education, but we shouldn’t be.