Hey, why do I keep seeing you in this aisle of the store? Do you work here or something? Sorry. We used to joke like that before Tim Hudak wanted your job.
But what will he do with it? Turn it into something that gets extruded from a machine? Something nasty and cheap, like the mush that becomes Chicken McNuggets and weaves its curiously addictive odour among the off-gassing of better Wal-marts?
After all, your job can get a lot nastier and cheaper than it is. Really, Hudak is just taking a pre-existing austerity plan to its absurd, dystopian conclusion. Already discrepancies are growing between you and your colleagues because of a rebate on sick days for some people. You haven't used your quota of sick days; therefore, you're elegible for a rebate on one of your unpaid days. Meanwhile, a colleague, who, through no personal wrongdoing, has been ill this year -- not one of those "imaginary" psychiatric disorders that we so-called "liberals" complain about; rather, the kind of physical ailment whose symptoms include blood-filled cysts that cause nebulae of agony when they explode inside the abdominal cavity -- will earn a day's less pay than you. Arguably a sick person might need that day's pay more than you do to cover incidental, non-refundable expenses that arise from illness: non-prescription meds and supplies as well as services to keep lives running smoothly when we can't cook or clean or get around as effectively as we would when we are well. But not to worry; under Hudak's system, that person, who happens to be an athlete, can make it up with "merit pay" and get ahead of you in this free-market world of education.
Anyway, Hudak isn't even in power yet; but thanks to low voter turn-out, that will be easy. Once he makes your job an essential service and outlaws your union (following the Wisconsin model, which he has been researching), he intends to hire you back for half your pay. In no time, public education will become like a smooth-running chain of Wal-mart stores, the most relevant experience which he brings to the field. Like most Wal-mart employees, you've probably already finished paying for your spacious house and reliable car, unless you've been slacking off; after all, we reap what we sow. And in order to sow, you will need special skills that have only an arbitrary relationship to good pedagogy.
Unless you play sports or a musical instrument or teach acting, you'll have a tough time qualifying for merit pay. And since we'll all be striving for that minimum 90 percent on standardized tests, it's probably best to teach from manuals and websites that extrude unit plans like bags of interesting-shaped pasta. After all, teaching isn't an art, right?
So with half your pay, merit pay would sure come in handy if you could get it in your spare time. (By the way, those long hours that you work will only get longer because classes will get bigger once many of us are fired.) As for those of us with heavy marking loads, well, there's no merit in that work. Better take that barista course while you can still afford it. Maybe you can get much-needed free coffees during your shifts; after all, every little resource counts.
Speaking of resources, let's talk about energy: yours. Since you will be working longer (not counting your part-time job) and getting crankier from marking those bigger classes, you might have to budget for a cheap divorce or settle for more of a solitary life than you'd envisioned. Your early hours have never suited most other adults, but your longer work will make relationships even more difficult to start or sustain. Oh, and if your productivity flags from the stress of personal loss or solitude, you'll probably get fired. After all, no one is irreplaceable.
So Hudak gets your job back for a worthier person to do it. Society loses you but gains the next "enthusiastic, quality teacher", at least until that one wears out and joins you in the line of unemployed to the crack of doom.
However, losing your job shouldn't matter to you: you're middle class, right? And middle class means that you own a vineyard or something and go to work just to beef up your investments. If you actually had to work to pay your bills, you'd be working class, but that can't be true. You've been told all your adult life that you're a middle class professional. I'm sure you'll be fine.
What, are you still standing there? Don't you have shelves to stock or something? No, wait. That's next year. Better study up!
skip to main |
skip to sidebar
