It’s extremely dangerous to call human beings “health hazards” or “menaces” and suggest that they should be identified, coerced, and isolated. This is the dehumanizing language of extermination and it will be used to target vulnerable people. We’re descending into open fascism. Alex Gutentag, Oakland Schools SDC teacher.
I do not know Alex Gutentag, though I have taught, off and on, in Special Ed programs. (An SDC teacher teaches a Special Day Class; its students are Special Education students who fall far enough outside of the curve of "full inclusion," i.e. mainstream education). At first I thought her name was not real--that she was writing under a pseudonym--because "guten tag" means "hello." It is a German interjection. Her name does appear online in an open letter sent to the OUSD Superintendent written by the Oakland Education Association about something called the Blueprint Plan, a policy driven by the district to merge smaller schools, thus eliminating campuses.
At that time, in 2019, she taught at a middle school in East Oakland, the part of Oakland that consists of the (very large) area south of Lake Merritt and west of Interstate 580 and the Oakland Hills. I attended two years of community college in East Oakland (Laney College) before transferring to a four-year school. East Oakland is working class through and through.
This school's demographics reflect the Oakland Unified's in that the school consists of about 20% African American students. It does not however have many white students. White students make up 10% of the district. While just about 50% of the OUSD is Latino/Hispanic, that number is close to 70% at Gutentag's school. 283 of 716 (40%) of the school's students are language learners.
Gutentag has also written at least two articles about Covid and lockdowns for the online magazine, Bellows, which claims to publish writing that goes beyond binaries, and as one of its aims wishes to demystify capitalism. The magazine prioritizes populism over subculture (if it is not clear by now, Gutentag opposes lockdowns, which is not only an heterodox position but potentially a career ending perspective). Here is the link to the two articles:
https://www.thebellows.org/author/alex-gutentag/
SPED, though a noble idea, is fraught with problems that seem intractable. One such problem relates to literacy rates and immigration. Law mandates that about 20% of any school's student body receive SPED services (10% of students are on IEPs and 10% more receive lighter support). The number is certainly greater in schools with a disproportionate percentage of language learners. This is because many language learners assessed for SPED services are misdiagnosed.
In my Teaching Credentialing program this was explained to me as a result of language and cultural barriers. One glaring reason relates to literacy: without literacy skills written tests are sort of pointless as tools of assessment for learning disabilities. Around 50% of language learners diagnosed as learning disabled are not in fact learning disabled.
SPED students tend disproportionately to be students of color and language learners. Sadly much research shows that once placed, a student will tend towards behaving as if they do have a learning disability even when they do not. The education professor Mike Rose has written about this. Rose grew up in a working class family in South Central L.A. and was placed in remedial classes early in his life. He learned that acting as if he belonged in remedial classes was the safest way to navigate school. He learned to please the authority figures. It was only when an English teacher 'discovered' Rose that he was removed from remedial classes. For the vast majority this never happens.
Why do I bring any of this up?
It seems to me that those students misdiagnosed and placed in SPED who then learn to mimic behaviors associated with the learning disabled work as a decent metaphor for the ways COVID restrictions reflect in human behavior. Overnight, sometime in March 2020, we were told that everyone was a potential "health hazard" and that anyone who did not adhere to this belief was a "menace." We isolated ourselves. We mimicked each other's behavior and donned masks. Now we find ourselves at a point in which up and down are meaningless, in which people are disoriented and do not know left from right. Our lives have become subject to the whims of those with the authority to mandate, control and restrict. Many willingly have done as told without asking questions. We are not children being prodded, coerced and pushed through a massively bureaucratic and politicized educational system, though we have given our power away.
What do you call those who say they're anti-war because of its devastating costs to the poor, but support war on a virus with a 99.9% survival rate through lockdowns that impose devastating costs on the poor? Michael P Senger
The great irony is that the lockdowns have been pushed most harshly in the United States by the Democratic Party, the political Left, the traditional labor party. Surely the parents of the students Gutentag teaches--recall that she works in a school that is 70% Latino and 40% language learners--have suffered disproportionately from loss of work during the last year. Unemployment hit record highs and it is a fact that some pre-pandemic employment will never be replicated. The hysteria whipped up by politicians and the lapdog media, which currently operates as a propaganda wing of the political establishment, leaves no room for dissent. The Great Barrington Declaration, a statement calling for the end to lockdowns in the West, signed by prize winning academics and scientists from both ends of the political spectrum, was derided and censored as Libertarian.
The truth is that the room for dissent has all but disappeared and Big Tech controls the dissemination of information (or disinformation). Big Tech, by at least one account, grew by $27 billion each quarter during the lockdowns. They will never cede willingly the new power they have gained.
Sometime in May my partner invited friends over for a small gathering in our backyard. Everyone showed up wearing masks and all but one took theirs off after they realized that we were not wearing them and that they were not required. These were academics: one Associate Professor at the local research University, his wife who had just taken a job at an Ivy League school for the Fall, an architect who also works at the local Arts College, a few graduate students, friends and family.
As the conversation moved to lockdowns and restrictions, what stunned me from these Left leaning progressives, with their high levels of expertise, was the lack of insight and understanding about the way most people live in the world. The architect, wearing her N95 mask, clearly uptight, glasses fogging over, asserted that "people will just have to work from home now. It will make life easier." The Italian Studies professor told me he had a college friend living in Mexico City who told him that most people in D.F. could not work remotely. This tidbit stunned the Professor from Italy.
"Why couldn't the city or State just provide everyone with internet?" he asked. They might do that, but most commerce in Mexico takes place out in the open: on the street: propane and water trucks deliver daily door to door, food stands are everywhere outdoors, the list goes on...Do you realize, I wanted to respond, that the majority of people in Mexico live on only $4 a day and work in a liminal economy with little to no political protection?
On my ride into Chapala from the airport, my driver Manuel told me about his life. He was sixteen when his father took him from his home in Sonora to live in Chicago. He stayed in the Chicago area for the next twenty-four years, working first as a school bus driver and later at high end automobile dealerships and as a tour bus driver. He shook Michale Jordan's hand. He visited the ballparks between Chicago, Millwaukee and Green Bay. He moved to Chapala ten years ago. I did not ask why.
During a normal year, pre-pandemic, Manuel told me, he drove riders from the airport three times a day. The drive is about 45 minutes each way and I paid $40, which included a tip. This year he has averaged 3 rides from the airport a week. During the winter, when the 'snowbirds' would normally arrive from North America, he was forced to find other forms of income. He shopped for retired Americans. He brokered business deals for non-Spanish speakers.
In Chicago, he told me, he had once paid close to $1100 a month for winter heat. Here he pays $24 to have his propane tank filled, which lasts 6 months or more. He has built a home on the lake here. His life is good. He told me he will never return to the United States.
Impressive, informative essay.
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