Yeah... no. This is a terrible piece and plays on about every single trope about teachers there is. (h/t @mrsjjee) https://twitter.com/TheAtlantic/status/1290671765090443264

Questions I wonder as a reader/editor: Obligation to whom? Clerks in grocery stores deal primarily with adults, who can be asked to leave a place of business. Teachers deal primarily with children, who cannot be asked to leave for picking their nose.

This is an interesting* rhetorical device on her part. She puts the words about her courage in her husband's mouth. It's her piece, his veiled accusation that teachers who don't work are letting students down.

*evasive, weak

Boy howdy. Hopefully, it'll change. But FYI, teachers. If it doesn't change, it's your fault. (Gotta love the use of a short emphatic sentence at the end of this graph.)

This is about offering empathy to teachers. And it's a powerful point - she knows how scary it all is But "hospital" is the key word - working in a hospital is not the same as working in a school.

See... here's a thing about referring to a job as a "calling." If an individual wants to claim they were called to do a job, have at it. They're speaking to their experience. But what an individual cannot do is claim everyone else in that profession was likewise called.

Unless you're a nun. Or otherwise work in a religious vocation where serving a "calling" has a shared linguistic and social meaning.

But that's what she's (rhetorically) trying to do here. She was called and thinks teachers were, too. This positions teachers as committing a moral and social failing if they do not go to work during a pandemic.

The piece is terrible not because of the author - for whom I have a great deal of empathy and compassion - but because it was published. It sets up teachers for scorn, not support. (See also: Goldstein's THE TEACHER WARS. http://www.danagoldstein.com/thebook )

*cracks knuckles*

A point that's worth raising in any response is that, yes - store clerks went to work. And many of them got sick and died. #PairedTexts