Perversion in Education

These days, Republicans hate teachers. I guess this is so true that my teacher mother might change her long Republican allegiances if she was capable, after hours of watching Fox News, of independent views. She isn't very capable of this; none of her experience in the first half of the Twentieth Century suggested to her that independence was desired or even tolerated in women. Indeed her female relatives that tried for independence were treated with great brutality. I can't blame her for choosing aggressive adherence to tradition as her way of getting through.

But this hating of teachers ...

I think I understand it, as a matter of gender politics. (Male teachers are still the exception; no one, I think, takes them very seriously as Alpha Males and men in this country are measured against the Alpha.)

I suppose that is part of the hate: Non-Alphas, if long-time teachers, will have better retirements than many businessmen of middling talent. Zounds. The world set on its ear. Wrongness of the Universe.

But teaching is a female profession, and the real, unforgiveable, offense is that Women, if long-time teachers, will (in this brief window of time) have better retirements than many businessmen of middling talent. This cannot be allowed.

Of course even the malignant usually need more than one reason to justify the virulence of such hate, and that additional thing is: Women are accustomed to teach values; always have been.

Here, I think, is the real offense. It was tolerable in past times for women teachers to teach values to young boys, because the profession was so rigorously segregated and under-compensated. Even young Alpha Boys knew that the patriarchs they would someday join out-ranked the female teachers. Even subjected to the authority of women while they were small, young Alpha boys could plainly see that they would, almost without effort, eventually out-rank all women in authority of all kinds. With a modicum of effort, boys-become-men could be pre-eminent in ranks women could only enter on their backs, by marrying.

Heady, sexual, stuff, and their Alpha fathers must have reminded them of it often in those conversations that in those days no one ever had with their daughters: The conversations where the fathers explain to their sons the difference between the real world and the fantastic images of equality, courtesy, fairness and artistic achievement inculcated by Women in their Schools. I know my father did, and he was among the kindest and best of men, but he knew wealth was available only to the tough (not to say ruthless). He saw his kindness as a disqualifier, no matter how deep his personal commitment to it.

It is these men that are the enemy. They see how useful amorality and ruthlessness are in amassing wealth and THEY DO NOT WANT THEIR SONS WEAKENED IN THIS BATTLE BY WOMANISH VIEWS.

It was perhaps tolerable that under-paid women and teachers would train the young in these ideas, and of course these ideas are useful in employees. But Alphas raising Alphas need these ideas terminated, or restricted to education of followers. The rich who want to teach their young to lead do not want any mistakes made; and respect and fair wages for teachers send entirely the wrong message.