Today's fresh hell

[sabotabby]

 I'm now given to understand that you shouldn't be afraid of the Monday morning announcements, as those are likely to fly well with the public; it's the Friday afternoon ones that the Drug Fraud Regime would like to slide under the table.

The Goatfucker's announcement this morning was confusing, so I'll clear some things up to the best of my ability.

What it sounds like: The Benevolent Leaders have heard the cries of parents of autistic kids who lost funding for treatment. It is responding by increasing funding to all the autistic kids it's now dumped into the mainstream education system without any supports. It will also provide mandatory training on how to deal with these oh-so-difficult autistic kids for every teacher.

Translation into real-life terms: As far as I can tell, this is the funding that a kid with any sort of exceptionality would get upon entering the school system. So essentially the government is proclaiming its generosity and expecting parents and teachers to lick its boots for continuing funding that already existed, even after it has slashed the extra funding that families used to get.

The training thing is even weirder. It looks like in-school aides are history and classroom teachers are now expected to do the work of specialized support workers with likely minimal training. And given that they're likely abolishing class caps, we'll be expected to be educational assistants for autistic kids in a class of 45 or whatever. I imagine the training will be some kind of compliance video or afternoon PD workshop. I asked the opinions of some autistic folks I know and they seemed to feel that the organization in charge is okay but not great, and certainly not led by autistic people. "Training" could mean anything from expecting us all to implement ABA and basically abuse the kids in our care to just simply useless videos where people read PowerPoints to us very slowly and then we do a multiple choice quiz, but it certainly isn't going to look anything like effective supports in small classes that centre the needs and voices of autistic people.

I imagine Friday's announcement will be lifting of class caps, followed by layoffs and spending cuts to balance out today's magnanimity.

Comments

[minoanmiss]

I wish I couldn't believe they were doing this.

My icon is side-eyeing as hard as she can.

[sabotabby]

I'm dreading Friday now, if this is the "good" news.

[sara]

we'll be expected to be educational assistants for autistic kids in a class of 45 or whatever

We tried this once. It ended with me getting a job in a state with better schools funding because good grief that was a terrible period in my kid's life.

[sabotabby]

This is going to destroy kids. The cruelty is the point.

[dewline]

Suspicion, shared.

[notasupervillain]

Ugh.

What's your sense of how the general public is responding to all this? Teacher strikes were a lot more successful in the USA than I thought teacher strikes possibly could be, so I'm curious if the public has a threshold for this bullshit.

[sabotabby]

One of my biggest fears—and objections to how the labour movement in general is handling this—is that I don't think teachers or other professionals understand how much teachers are despised by the general public. But I read the comments on SUN articles, which is a better gauge of public opinion than most things. Any strategy that relies on "getting the public on side" is going to fail for two reasons: one, because the public hates teachers and teenagers, and two, because this government does not care one whit for what the general public thinks. The only thing that's surprising so far is their willingness to go after kindergarten, because everyone feels warm fuzzies about 5-year-olds.

Basically we're overpaid and underworked glorified babysitters and get approximately 10 months off a year, and everyone remembers that one teacher who was really mean to them. It's different in the US where teachers have to donate plasma to pay the rent.

To top it off, the public is really primed to accept the virtues of charter and voucher schools with documentaries like Waiting For Superman and the rhetoric of "choice," which sounds good. I mean, I've seen progressive people tout Bill Gates a philanthropist and a "good" billionaire without understanding that he has been systemically destroying American public education despite having absolutely no background in education whatsoever.

We ought to have called a general strike for the day after Ford got elected. It's only by grinding the province to a stop that we have any chance at all.

[notasupervillain]

I mean, my aunt worked in a chip truck all summer, and it never occurred to me that she probably needed the money to give her kids an approximation of the middle-class life. (I thought it was amazing that she had unlimited access to French fries. I was a kid.) And that was in Ontario. It's not donating blood plasma, but it's not great.

Hopefully - and I think this is a pretty realistic hope - Ford will go after kittens and motherhood soon. He might not care what the public thinks, but the public cares. If nothing else, Scheer really doesn't want all of Ontario to despise the Tories.

[sabotabby]

How weird is it that Scheer, who couldn't even say "Muslim" or "Islam" or "mosque" in his tweet about the Christchurch massacre, might be the best hope of reining Ford in? We truly live in the weirdest timeline.

[notasupervillain]

The same timeline where a Neo-Nazi group was taken down by the friendly black activist they handed control of the group to ... https://talkingpointsmemo.com/muckraker/how-national-socialist-movement-fell-apart

It's a weird time. And Scheer may be the hero we need.

(I wouldn't bet on it, he's too weak to be effectual.)