A teacher replies to Scott Morrison

Let’s start with the facts.

Teaching is a job. Teachers receive both general and specialised training. They do what amounts to an apprenticeship. They are registered by a professional body. They go to work; they earn a salary.

In schools there are also Education Support staff – people whose jobs may be as varied as being school nurse or psychologist; a librarian; an office administrator or assistant or maybe the maintenance and odd jobs person. There are also cleaners, canteen staff, IT people and a whole range of other jobs – some casual, some part-time, some employed by the Department of Education and training; some employed directly by the school.

What they all have in common is that key word – job!

Working in a school is just that – work like anyone else has! It is not a religious vocation; it is not a special calling; its not something we do out of the goodness of our enormous hearts. We work in schools for the same reason everyone else goes to work – to pay the bills; keep our families fed and maybe have a bit left over to enjoy some leisure time.

Don’t get me wrong; as jobs go; its pretty satisfying – we’re not making commodities; we’re helping other people. And that’s nice. But don’t lose track of the key thing. School staff are just doing a job and they are doing it for the same reasons everyone else in society works.

Which is why PM Scott Morrison’s pleas to teachers to be heroes is so disgusting and so clearly about ideology. And why his failure to fall into line with much more sensible and rational State Premiers is creating confusion and anxiety at a time when we need calm.

As one colleague said. “I’m not a hero. I don’t want to be.”

School staff did not sign up to put their safety and the safety of their families on the line for the sake of a job. Frankly, no worker does.

Let’s then look at another fact. One the PM now acknowledges.

His latest statements make it clear that he’s had to recognise what school staff and our unions have been saying for a while – we want schools closed because we are concerned for OUR safety. Whether children can or can’t get the virus. Whether they do or don’t get sick (and die). Whether they can or can’t pass it on – is completely irrelevant. Schools are large workplaces – my school has nearly 200 adults onsite on any given day. And if we count the students who are 17 or 18 as being essentially adults, that figure rises to nearly 500. Whether the children are a danger to us and themselves is not the issue – it’s the other adults I am worried about!

Recognising this is exactly why the PM has had to produce his sick-making little video. He knows he can no longer ignore the danger that school staff are in if they return to the workplace – so instead he has to try and use the rhetoric of war; “doing your bit”, engaging with the brave ANZAC spirit.

It might be news to Scott Morrison (it certainly is to many first year Uni History students) but the ANZACs were slaughtered wholesale on the beaches of Gallipoli and in the end they lost. It was a stupid, reckless act by leaders who cared more about their reputations and the potential “glory” than about the lives of their troops. In fact perhaps a very apt metaphor for what the PM wants school staff to do.  

But there are some more facts that the PM seems to be continuing to ignore. The first is that children clearly can and do get the virus. Not a day goes by that we hear of another young person who has been infected – the latest a child of a Qantas flight attendant. In New Zealand one of the largest clusters is in a Secondary School – where the infection has spread among staff, students, their parents and their siblings. There are cases in child care centres. There are individuals and their families.

A March 22 article in The Lancet explains that about 5.6% of children who have the virus develop a serious case of the illness and about 0.6% develop complications and multi-organ failure. Fatalities are rare – but not unknown – one of the latest UK victims is only five years old. In teenagers fatality is more likely than for children under 10.

Scott Morrison keeps telling us he’s taking scientific and medical advice – perhaps his advisors haven’t read The Lancet (a prestigious, peer-reviewed medical journal). Because if they had, surely even those small numbers would be enough to say that the risk to the long term health and well-being of the nation’s children is just not worth whatever ideological point he wants to make by trying to force schools to fully re-open.

Some final facts that the PM either isn’t aware of or hasn’t got right.

If you listened to his begging video, you’d think that missing a bit of school was the single worst thing that could happen in a child’s life. As a teacher of over 25 years experience, let me assure you, its not!

We often agree to students going on extended family holidays; many students miss large sections of their schooling through illness – either mental or physical; many young people for periods of their life are school refusers or simply wag. For very few children does this do any long term harm. Teachers are educational experts – we have curriculum documents and years of collective experience which means we know what skills and knowledge children should have acquired at different points in their education. We are adept at filling the gaps when young people have missed out. That’s the job we get paid for.

In the middle of crisis and uncertainty what the nation’s children need are adults around them who love and support them. They need clarity and they need straight forward, direct messages. They need all the adults in their lives – school staff; parents; grandparents; and the powerful folk they see on the evening news – to all be on the same page and giving them the same clear message.

That message should be – staying home from school will protect you and it will protect the adults who care for you, at school and at home. Those adults are working their butts off to give you some structure and keep your education on track. It won’t always be easy; but don’t worry, the adults have your back and when this is over they will make sure you are ok.

If the PM really cared about young people and their education; instead of confusing the clear message that States like Victoria have delivered to staff, parents and children; instead of playing ideological games with people’s health and safety – he’d be letting school staff get on with the job that we’re paid to do; under conditions that allow us to do it safely and therefore keep doing it when this whole mess is over.