Not any asshole off the street can teach algebra

Why not let vets become heart surgeons while we're at it?

Prominent Ohio Republicans push nonsense in public education like “transgender students use kitty litter boxes” or “Critical Race Theory will turn your lumpy-headed son Bartholomew into a Stalinist” to scaremonger bigoted white people into voting for their unpopular agenda.

The cacophony of jibber jabber also hides the fact that they don’t have any serious policy proposals. Ohio is a Republican State—as they’re so quick to remind us after every election. That means the state’s myriad of problems is on them.

I’m 35. When I went to school, Ohio ranked fifth in public education. We’re No. 34 now and tumbling. But that’s a feature of your state hooked on conservative narcotics. Their leaders don’t think that rating is low enough.

After reading Senate Bill 361, the latest Republican proposal to fix the teacher shortage caused by Republicans short-changing our public school system for decades, how could you think anything else?

From the minds of Republican State Senators Sandra O’Brien (Lenox Township), Jerry Cirino (Kirtland), George F. Lang (West Chester) and Tim Shaffer (Lancaster), via Morgan Trau of news5cleveland.com:

COLUMBUS, Ohio — A new bill in the Ohio Senate that is aiming to curb the teacher shortage by allowing veterans to become educators without them having a background in education is leaving both veterans and educators concerned.

The bill would allow school districts to greatly lessen the requirements for veterans to become teachers. Some service members would be able to teach without having a degree, a license or a background in education.

Any time you can introduce a bill that confuses the two groups of people it involves, you have to do it! I’m always saying that to myself.

There hasn’t been an Ohio Legislature moment like this since “Lawmaker’s comments about Holocaust raise concern.”

This reeks of a bill from people who have never served in a classroom. Or just a group of lazy chumps who want headlines about “helping vets find work” to run in their local news outlets weeks before the Midterm Elections.

It’s like watching a seasoned mailman. You watch them and think, “My god, that man’s job is a literal walk in the park.” No. It’s grueling, physical labor. That mailman just weathered that storm that 70% of his fellow new hires failed. He makes that job look easy.

Republicans similarly treat public school teachers. They have zero respect for the trade. They hate their union. They wouldn’t care tomorrow if the earth opened and swallowed every public school tomorrow.

That’s why they think any shell-shocked veteran off the street can waltz into a classroom and do an adequate job molding young minds for whatever horrors tomorrow's economy has in store. In my case, it was two unwinnable wars, a Great Recession and a pandemic, to name a few highlights.

The conservative movement has no answers for public education. So, like the gun issue, this is the level of thought that gets put into possible solutions. And hey, it’s hard to blame them. I probably wouldn’t think that hard either if my re-election was already written in stone, no matter what vile misdeeds I got caught doing.

It’s diabolical, however, that Democrats can’t push back on this issue without Republicans shrieking about how they’re dishonoring our nation’s bravest heroes. It would be rank hypocrisy considering they’d feed every veteran willingly into the collective wood chipper if it advanced their political aims. But that’s never mattered to their voters before, and it won’t stop now.

In times like this, I’m thankful I don’t have a child. If I did, I’d have serious questions about letting this cabal of unfuckable reactionaries within 100 feet of their education.

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