Anti-mask protest led by Utah parents and local officials. A window into middle-class rights-based activism and the costs of such an approach. https://www.sltrib.com/news/education/2020/07/15/packed-meeting-utah/">https://www.sltrib.com/news/educ...

It’s going to take unions and other forms of collective action for faculty and staff concerns to be taken as seriously as the dreams of middle-class parents for academic accolades and sports scholarships. The anti-mask ideology & vague assertion of rights are merely the vehicles.

There are other fascinating questions too, such as: what happens when a sector of the community depends heavily on a public good while simultaneously embracing a corrosive anti-government philosophy.

If we were to disaggregate as a thought exercise what schools do, it becomes clearer that some see it as a substitute for day care, others purely as a means to secure economic advantage, only some in terms of fulfilling shared social and intellectual development.

In a crisis, these faultlines are made suddenly visible and life-threatening, as the social fabric is shown to be more tenuous than previously thought and each tries to make off with whatever one can carry—others be damned.