Sadly, it appears that respecting the teaching profession was just a pandemic fad
Two weeks out from the Christmas break, and across the US the annual note from school PTAs reaches parents: it is time to recognise this year’s efforts by teachers through contributions to the holiday fund. It’s a solicitation that goes out every year, but this year the wording is particular. The past 12 months have been terrible, period, but particularly terrible for those working in schools. Please dig deep, we are advised; these are uniquely difficult times.
It’s not only a whip-round but an invitation for thanks and praise that, in these endless, waning days of the pandemic, seems to belong to an earlier time. If we were frightened in 2020, there was also a sense of readjustment, much discussed, about what we owed to one another. There was a warm glow of mutual responsibility. Those taken for granted were lauded and rewarded. In New York, food delivery apps introduced a button for a 40% tip, and teachers and doctors were heroes. Nothing lasts, of course, but the collective sense of a near-death experience meant that – as many thought in the heat of the moment – some version of this gratitude would.
Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
