This weekly roundup thread is intended for all culture war posts. 'Culture war' is vaguely defined, but it basically means controversial issues that fall along set tribal lines. Arguments over culture war issues generate a lot of heat and little light, and few deeply entrenched people ever change their minds. This thread is for voicing opinions and analyzing the state of the discussion while trying to optimize for light over heat.
Optimistically, we think that engaging with people you disagree with is worth your time, and so is being nice! Pessimistically, there are many dynamics that can lead discussions on Culture War topics to become unproductive. There's a human tendency to divide along tribal lines, praising your ingroup and vilifying your outgroup - and if you think you find it easy to criticize your ingroup, then it may be that your outgroup is not who you think it is. Extremists with opposing positions can feed off each other, highlighting each other's worst points to justify their own angry rhetoric, which becomes in turn a new example of bad behavior for the other side to highlight.
We would like to avoid these negative dynamics. Accordingly, we ask that you do not use this thread for waging the Culture War. Examples of waging the Culture War:
-
Shaming.
-
Attempting to 'build consensus' or enforce ideological conformity.
-
Making sweeping generalizations to vilify a group you dislike.
-
Recruiting for a cause.
-
Posting links that could be summarized as 'Boo outgroup!' Basically, if your content is 'Can you believe what Those People did this week?' then you should either refrain from posting, or do some very patient work to contextualize and/or steel-man the relevant viewpoint.
In general, you should argue to understand, not to win. This thread is not territory to be claimed by one group or another; indeed, the aim is to have many different viewpoints represented here. Thus, we also ask that you follow some guidelines:
-
Speak plainly. Avoid sarcasm and mockery. When disagreeing with someone, state your objections explicitly.
-
Be as precise and charitable as you can. Don't paraphrase unflatteringly.
-
Don't imply that someone said something they did not say, even if you think it follows from what they said.
-
Write like everyone is reading and you want them to be included in the discussion.
On an ad hoc basis, the mods will try to compile a list of the best posts/comments from the previous week, posted in Quality Contribution threads and archived at /r/TheThread. You may nominate a comment for this list by clicking on 'report' at the bottom of the post and typing 'Actually a quality contribution' as the report reason.
Jump in the discussion.
No email address required.
Notes -
Greg Abbott had created a task force specifically about their staff shortages in Texas in 2022. In Oklahoma, they used employees across various state agencies as substitutes.. In Iowa many schools have moved to (and many are still at!) four day school weeks. And here's a story from 2024 about Florida still dealing with staff shortages of teachers, bus drivers and substitutes.
In specifically Florida, the shortages were so bad that they had to draw substitutes from non traditional sources. One district even emailed the parents asking for them to step in as substitute workers. Some shortages are still ongoing! Like last year some parents were dealing with delays in school bus pickups due to shortages of workers
Honestly the school week probably should be 3-4 days a week like college. It’s more efficient.
Those areas did open
Do you even read your own links? Florida is quoted as paying $10-13 an hour for substitutes. Or just google a bunch of links for staff shortages? If this was important they could hike pay. You can make double walking into a Chipotle.
Florida schools perform fine so it’s probably not a real issue. Though the demographic adjusted stats don’t account for Flordia Hispanics being white Europeans while California is filled with Amerindians.
OK, this bears repeating, even though I thought everyone knew the point of the US public school system is not education. It has many purposes to many different people; social engineering(mainly by shifting the default choice for middle class women away from 'housewife' rather than anything to do with the students, it's not good enough at indoctrination for that- although it has been in the past), free daycare, giving older kids something to do other than being rowdy, etc. Hell some of it is just very expensive signaling. But 'actually educating kids', let alone doing so efficiently, falls very low on the list of priorities, and US school systems which prioritize it over all these other goals(creating employment demand for college educated women, warehousing teenagers where they'll be less annoying, etc) perform much better than public schools.
50% agree. It’s primary mission is still education at a minimum it’s what drives the economy getting the top 20% educated and into the professional class.
But yes it does all that other stuff. And in certain areas the education part is the least important. Assimilation use to be important but we seem to have given that up.
As far as Covid goes staff shortages were not important for educating. A reduced schedule with off-day homework accomplishes that.
The top 20% would be educated regardless- their parents can afford private school.
The system panics when teachers aren't going to get paid, when the free daycare isn't being provided it's a big deal, job cuts are a horrible tragedy, but when the kids don't learn it's a shrug and a demand for more money- interventions to provide school lunches during the summer, even outside of the school setting, are very welcomed by the system. Interventions to educate kids better are not.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Yes that's basic economics. Having to raise your pay in a shortage is the default thing expected in a shortage. Supply goes down but demand stays the same = price goes up. That doesn't change that supply went down.
This was about pandemic caused shortages of labor. Not states refusing to hire workers.
Your articles come closer to proving my point by Bayesian logic. You went google searching for “teacher shortage” and the best articles you could find were school districts offering wages 50% of no-skill wages which is essentially no different than just deciding not to hire.
It’s like saying I want a Ferrari and my bid is $15k. I don’t actually want a Ferrari.
If workers currently cost X part of the budget, and then a supply shock causes them to cost 1.5x the budget in order to maintain the same quantity of workers, then it is a problem of shortages. Price is the result of supply and demand. Yes you can pay more to help make up for the shortage and get new supply, but that you have to pay more is because of a supply shock.
The same way if you were to buy cheese every week for 2 dollars and then suddenly a disease spread through the cows and less cheese could be made this year and it now cost 4 dollars. Yes you can pay more to get the same amount of cheese for yourself. There is still a cheese shortage.
Wages going up were not a result of the pandemic. They are still up. It’s government handouts. Military disability. Food stamps. Etc. but $13 an hour for someone with a bachelor degree was never a serious attempt to get workers.
Same story in everything run by Dems. Why can’t we build housing? Regulations. But nuclear is too expensive. Why is that? It’s creating a problem and then complaining we can not doing that thing after you created the problem.
We spend 225 billion a year now on military disability. Honestly I was stupid not joining the military. Spend 4 years and get $5k for life. 15% of the working age population is now on food stamps.
It sounds like you're just ranting about tangential issues here instead. Supply and demand is a rather ironclad economic law.
And what does this have to do with the original point about labor shortages being the issue with school closures? Florida was open. Florida can’t hire bachelor degree substitute teachers for $14 an hour
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
Sûre, there’s a shortage of school workers- but there’s also a general labor shortage, and schools don’t pay exceptionally well(especially in non-teacher roles, school maintenance and driving and nursing roles pay much much less relative to skill set and qualifications than teaching does). That doesn’t distinguish schools from thousands of other things that did reopen on time.
Well some things are better at reopening under capacity than others. A hardware store might be able to handle 3/4th the workers by just letting some tasks go undone and having customers not served as fast. But a school with 3/4th the teachers means classrooms getting crowded, and especially with younger children who are gonna be more rowdy and energetic in general, harder to control. Likewise 3/4th the cafeteria crew and all of a sudden you don't have enough food being made in time for the children or food safety requirements aren't being met. If it's not too bad, you can get away with just telling the few kids at the end "sorry we out of X, gotta have Y" but it doesn't have too much leniency. Schools are still making up for staff shortages in this way. Large bus driver shortages mean kids don't get to school but the smaller bus driver shortages just mean some kids get to school 40 minutes later.
But still there's only so much that can be worked with, especially when dealing with the young children and legal requirements that politicians were hesitant to change over temporary issues, that during the height of COVID they just didn't have much choice.
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link
More options
Context Copy link