What they did to Education

Oh dear, New Zealand, what have you done? Reading this I almost cried. New Zealand's education system has been destroyed. Ministry of Education, principals, boards of trustees, hang your heads in shame. 

https://thebfd.co.nz/2022/09/03/letter-from-a-mandated-teacher/

Some days it is just painful.

It’s tough to get out of bed, to pretend to my kids that everything is OK, and that our country is a safe and fair place to live. I cannot count the times when I have completely melted down in the last ten months, while driving alone so that they can’t see the heartbreak I feel – the broken heart that I don’t want them to see.

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Instead, we had principals, colleagues and our unions pressuring us to make us follow – or else suffer the consequences. In staffrooms around the country, a line had been drawn. If you did not roll up your sleeve, you were branded an anti-vaxxer, a threat to the students and staff, and someone who shouldn’t be an educator.

The mandate also pulled students into this division when teachers (people in positions of power) spewed their rhetoric about the unvaxxed and how dangerous they were. My heart shattered when I had a student approach me and laugh, cruelly, while saying that I would die from Covid. It seemed like all compassion and kindness had been wiped out, and at that moment it became clear we were in a two-tiered society.

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In effect, it was now unlawful for us to step foot on the property. We could be arrested and fined. Upstanding citizens who had never done anything illegal, who had cared deeply for our young students, who had dedicated years of service to teaching and helping Kiwi children to be set up for good and solid life paths, were suddenly treated like criminals. Unable to even have contact with the students into whose education we had put our hearts and souls, and years of dedication.

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Fast-forward to now. For those lucky enough to have their jobs back, or those who have been given a lesser role, such as babysitting/relief (at a much lower pay rate), they now find in the staff rooms that people who took the jab barely acknowledge what happened. They certainly don’t acknowledge the pain they have caused to their innocent fellow Kiwis. They don’t acknowledge that those of us who were thrown out like garbage, actually needed someone from our former school to call up and ask if we were OK. We needed them to stand up for our shared humanity, and our shared and sacred Human Rights.