Republicans Are Trying To Punish Teachers For Doing Their Jobs

In red states all over the country, teachers are under attack from Republicans. More than 100 bills have already been filed this year to limit what teachers can teach their students, and many of the bills come with stiff penalties against the teachers themselves. Republicans are taking an already-under appreciated workforce and making them into the enemies, as Farron Cousins explains.

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*This transcript was auto-generated. Please excuse any typos.

In red states all over the United States, Republican lawmakers are proposing bills. There's been more than 120 of 'em proposed so far in 2022 that restricts what teachers are legally allowed to teach their students. That's bad enough as it is. And of course, we all know what this is like down here in Florida, they have the, don't say gay bill as they're calling it, which basically says you can't have any discussions about race or excuse me, not race. That's a separate piece of legislation. You can't talk about gender. You can't talk about gender identity. You can't talk about sex. Basically. You can't help these children through what could be very trying and difficult times in their lives when they need somebody. The most somebody that they trust can't do it. And that's gonna become a law. It's already past the Florida state Senate. Ron DeSantis said he supports it. It'll become a law here in the state of Florida. Over in Oklahoma, they proposed legislation that would make it illegal for teachers to teach anything that goes against religious beliefs that students may hold.

And then of course, we have the bands on critical race theory teaching across the country. Now the problem, the bigger problem with these pieces of legislation is the penalties that they carry for the teachers, themselves. Many of these pieces of legislation carry both financial penalties and work employment penalties for these teachers that bill in Oklahoma makes it to where if a teacher teaches anything that goes against religious beliefs, which basically means anything from biology class, every student that complains that teacher gets fined $10,000. Every single one of them, five students complain $50,000. There goes your entire year's salary. If not your, you know, year and a quarter salary, it would also bar you from tee teaching in the state for three years, actually five years. I think it is for librarians who don't remove books it's three years. So you can't even work anymore in the field that you've chosen.

Same thing. In other states, you teach critical race theory. You get fined, you Bann from teaching for anywhere from two to five years in that state. Oh, and the Oklahoma bill also makes it illegal for teachers to use GoFundMe, to raise any kind of outside funds to pay those fines. If you do that, that's when you get a banned from teaching for five years, this is not just an attack on education. It's an attack on educate tours themselves. We have already seen education experts come out there, warning us that we are going to see a mass resignation of teachers across the country. And then what do we do? Teachers are already some of the most underappreciated and of course, underpaid people in this country and right-wingers wanna attack them as either people indoctrinating our kids or glorified babysitters is how they describe them as the spouse of an educator.

I can tell you, these people work their asses off in a way that I don't even think I could handle. Even back when I was working 70 hours a week, doing this, it's insane. How much work they put into this, how many hours they put in each day. But because of the way the contracts are structured, they only get paid for seven and put in 12. All you want, you don't get overtime. You get paid for seven hours and that's it. The benefits are horrendous. And now they're being persecuted even further for doing their job, which is teaching people about things. But apparently things trigger the snowflake Republicans too much. So the teachers are being punished. The children being robbed of a proper education, but Hey, Republicans are winning a lot of political points from the dumbest of their constituencies.