anti-Capitalist Samizdat: Luke Swamp's Tender Mercies

IS LUKE STILLWATER GUILTY OF PROFESSIONAL MISCONDUCT?
Should teachers be comparing themselves to fish sellers?
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· “In the event an employee of Inequality Schools is guilty of misconduct….”

All human beings deserve respect—including fish-sellers. But fish-sellers (and arms dealers) are importantly different from teachers.
Unlike your local grocery store clerk or your favorite fruit vendor, teachers have undergone professional training. A teacher has devoted years to acquire the needed knowledge and skills. A teacher is a professional in a way that a fish seller cannot be.
A teacher has responsibilities that fish-sellers don’t have. S/he is responsible for young people at various stages of development. Knowledge of fish can be scientific and hard-won, but the usual fish-seller doesn’t possess such knowledge.
Nor are students customers. Customers want something specific from their fish-seller. Customer and seller are both adults. The relationship is scarcely like a teacher’s relationship with a student.

It is a dangerous over-simplification to suggest that the demands faced by a teacher are like those of a fish-seller. It is seriously over-simplified to suggest that a teacher’s mental attitude can be reduced to cheerful silliness. It is outrageous and demeaning to propagate this fishy philosophy with childish slogans.
It is a dangerous over-simplification to suggest that mindless silliness is a classroom strategy.
You can’t sum up what’s needed throughout the day with the clichéd phrase ‘a positive attitude’.
(in any case, the tendency to do so betrays a sort of naïve cultural insularity, a sort of American emotional imperialism)
In the course of the day teachers may need to put on various emotional faces; sometimes even a frown may be required.
Moreover, Stillwater condescends to teachers and disrespects them by talking down to them as if they were children who needed help.
He disrespects us when he asks us to mindlessly parrot out loud his childish slogans—as if he were a cheerleader at some sporting event.

These policies have been consistent, beginning with a “fish” video and continuing with Hitleresque repetition of silly childish slogans. (“Hitleresque” because the fascist leader once explained that people could only understand a few simple ideas, which had to be constantly repeated.)
Stillwater’s fishy policies rob teachers of the respect they deserve. He is guilty of professional misconduct.

(This takes nothing away from people who have such physically demanding, back-breaking jobs. Thank god teaching is not like that! How absurd to compare the two!)
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