Hello. I have just heard that a fellow union member has been trying to shame hourly-paid colleagues into face-to-face teaching because "the students will be disappointed" if they can't inhale their tutor's miasma while discussing various topics.

i understand that some educators have so fully partaken of the marketised-education koolaid that they cannot conceive of a student-teacher relationship outside of a metric of customer satisfaction. But there must be a line.

Students' transient affective response to not having a certain uni experience is not of equal weight when considering their health, our colleagues' health + the wider community's health. Only a weak + cowardly mindset lets this spectre of disappointment direct one's choices.

Grow up. Have some respect for yourself, your colleagues & your students. Stop treating education as an event that occurs only in proximity to your embodied wisdom. Accept the reality of this pandemic + what it means in this country. & show some solidarity to precarious workers.

Hey. If i shame one person with this thread into not emotionally browbeating their juniors into teaching face-to-face then that's a win. observe the union policy of default online teaching.

I might start naming people, jerks.