You offer 7,000 air filters against Covid and expect retired teachers to put themselves in harm’s way. Who are you kidding?
On 2 January you tweeted: “Teachers and support staff across the country have put in a Herculean effort over the past 18 months and more, and I know we can count on their steadfast support in the coming weeks as we weather this storm.” I’m a great fan of metaphors but when it comes to pandemics, we have to be pretty careful to choose appropriate ones. Is a Covid pandemic a “storm”? I’ll put it like this: we breathe on each other. That’s how we get Covid. Storms come from up there in the clouds. We don’t breathe storms on each other.
More on metaphor and analogies later. In the meantime: on both parts of that sentence, you’re absolutely right. It has been a Herculean effort and we can all count on teachers in the future. So it’s annoying to reflect how little teachers have been helped or praised by your government for their hard work throughout the pandemic. Partly as a result, insults and idiotic comments have appeared about them being workshy or having it easy.
