UsForThem - “opaque lobbyists” with links to the far right?

[LacyEdge]

Prof Alice Roberts started an interesting Twitter thread discussing this, linking to Nafeez Ahmed’s article about U4T in Byline Times. Replies suggest UsForThem aren’t a concerned parents’ group at all and are linked with a far right funded group.

Well I never.

twitter.com/theAliceRoberts/status/1352993581414424576

news.sky.com/story/covid-19-schools-will-not-reopen-for-all-pupils-after-february-half-term-pm-confirms-12200329

@noblegiraffe - the parents I am talking about are definitely not Daily Mail readers. What are the unions going to do about this called Smear Campaign?! Do they even care? Teachers, parents and schools need to work together not be pitted against each other.
As for the article you linked regarding birthdays. In our school, they introduced a wear the birthday hat and badge on Day 1 of the autumn term and nobody batted an eyelid. They also asked parents to buy a book for the school library instead of sending in treats. It has been a success. It is not that difficult to adapt to make a child feel special on their birthday when you cannot sing. That is all most kids and parents one, celebrate the child. They don't want it to be harmful to others or teachers.

Yes but instead of working with schools, Us4Them went to the papers with petty complaints.

And campaigned for lower safety standards in schools.

And post horrendous vitriol at people who disagree with them. Teachers on here and on twitter. Accusing heads of child abuse on twitter when they announce masks in schools. The other day they laid into Natasha Devon, a mental health champion, saying she didn’t care about mental health in kids.

Vile group.

Here is a link to all the NEU press releases where they repeatedly make the point they want schools to remain open safely . Unlike Us4then that just want them open and couldn’t give a flying fuck about this being done safely.

Anybody, including parents, can read that and see what they have asked for and it is not blanket closures of schools....

I don’t know how the teaching unions can communicate better with parents, maybe they don’t care?

Why on earth should they communicate with parents except via their press office and the media, like any union? They’re for teachers, not parents.

Communication comes via schools and teachers. It’s a bit unreasonable to hate teaching unions when you don’t understand their purpose.

@noblegiraffe

Yeah lots of people seem to have fallen for the Daily Mail headlines about how Boris was battling teaching unions about opening schools.

It was all a fake narrative to make him look like a strong leader and to give him a victory. The unions had no say in when schools re-opened and teachers in those unions spent the summer saying ‘wtf is the Mail on about?!’

This.

God this is so wearying isn't it.

musicaldilemma
I actually don't know what 'the unions' can do.

You can't force people to read press releases, or find long, discursive, factual reports if they are insisting on reading headlines and misinformation.

A little bit of me would like to. A forceful mass political literacy campaign. Adults captured whilst going about their daily business, held in enclosures and educated in locating, recognising and analysing primary source material.

However, the sensible part of me realised this would be a serious infraction of people's liberty. Our conception of liberty includes the right to be silly and ignorant (meaning uninformed) if they do choose.

And there are good reasons for that. We often have more pressing demands on our time. It's not wrong - and it is therefore congruent with liberty.

You seem to have a strange idea about 'the unions', however, which I must dispel.

'The unions' are just organisations of teachers, coming together to safeguard working conditions.

They don't have superpowers; they're not your parents. You seem to be endowing them with the fantasy powers with which very small people endow their parents.

Arising from such a fantasy-based projection of power, there inevitably is an ambivalence - a sort of blaming of the fantasy figure for not living up to the impossible wishes of the child ('unions can do anything! Do something impossible! I am furious you won't!) and an anger that the fantasy-figure is to blame for any limits the small person experiences ('it's your fault I can't fly! I hate you!')

So you seem to both hold 'the unions' to blame for all the problems around schools and the pandemic (they're really not) and you seem to think they have super-human powers of communication (they don't).

One of the traumas - but also the amazing, energy-bestowing - gifts of finally growing up is when we realise these fantasy figures and projections are, in fact, just people.

When we realise that, we finally become adults, and step into the full sunlight of our potential as fully grown-up human beings.

@thecatfromjapan - Thank you for your condescending post. I am Oxbridge educated, speak five languages and am just time poor due to having a City job and 4 kids. However, you have certainly alienated me. What exactly makes you more literate than me?
The fantasy figure you have created that I supposedly represent? You are not listening when I tell you that the unions have indeed alienated the vast majority of parents.

[quote Musicaldilemma]@thecatfromjapan - Thank you for your condescending post. I am Oxbridge educated, speak five languages and am just time poor due to having a City job and 4 kids. However, you have certainly alienated me. What exactly makes you more literate than me?
The fantasy figure you have created that I supposedly represent? You are not listening when I tell you that the unions have indeed alienated the vast majority of parents.[/quote]
How?

What do you think the unions have done?

I am Oxbridge educated, speak five languages and am just time poor due to having a City job and 4 kids.

You should still be able to work out (or find out) what a union is for. It’s not hard as a quick Google will do it.

[quote Musicaldilemma]@thecatfromjapan - Thank you for your condescending post. I am Oxbridge educated, speak five languages and am just time poor due to having a City job and 4 kids. However, you have certainly alienated me. What exactly makes you more literate than me?
The fantasy figure you have created that I supposedly represent? You are not listening when I tell you that the unions have indeed alienated the vast majority of parents.[/quote]
Proof if ever that first class education does not equate to intelligence or common sense. Your claim that the unions have alienated the vast majority of parents is not true. This is your opinion and does not reflect the majority of parents. You show a clear lack of understanding of the purpose of a union and their remit.

There were loads of posters on here that claimed that the unions stopped primary schools re-opening to all pupils in June when actually the government realised they'd fucked up, proposed something impossible given their own guidelines and had to back down.

And of course shit front pages like this didn't help.

I had my own parents telling me what the unions weren't letting me do, who were then surprised to hear it was bollocks and I was actually doing the stuff 'the unions' had forbidden. They got far more suspicious of media mention of unions after that.

Oh look, there's that agenda again. This from today. Teaching unions 'push for an even longer school closure'.

What did they say?
"Dr Mary Bousted, joint general secretary of the National Education Union, said: 'If we come out too early, we will end up in lockdown again.'

'We all want schools to open, but like the Prime Minister we want them to open when it is safe to do so. This has to be done sustainably and safely,' she continued.

We agree with Boris Johnson that this is a balancing act. He has a duty to assess the easing of lockdown according to the progress and effects of vaccination, a reduction in cases and the various other criteria he has set out.

'But in setting out a potential date of March 8, falling once again into his characteristic and too often misplaced optimism, he is pre-empting a decision that will have to be made in mid-February at the very earliest.'

The NEU added: 'To suggest a date at this stage runs the risk of creating false hope. The Prime Minister may now be immune to the embarrassment of U-turns, but school leaders, teachers and support staff, not to mention families and students, are utterly exhausted by them.' "

A perfectly sensible statement which entirely fits with what Johnson said about 8th March being the earliest schools could open and would depend on the data and it's being touted as a push for school closures. And people fall for it.

@noblegiraffe my DM always asks me now if what the papers are saying about education/schools is correct, after she has heard me rant so much about the rubbish papers print about schools

[quote Musicaldilemma]@thecatfromjapan - Thank you for your condescending post. I am Oxbridge educated, speak five languages and am just time poor due to having a City job and 4 kids. However, you have certainly alienated me. What exactly makes you more literate than me?
The fantasy figure you have created that I supposedly represent? You are not listening when I tell you that the unions have indeed alienated the vast majority of parents.[/quote]
musicaldilemma
Nothing makes me more literate than; nothing makes me think I'm more literate than you.
You're projecting wildly again.
I pointed out that it's not possible to force people to go out and find information they really don't want to.
That's a fact.

I pointed out that you have a really odd idea about the power of 'the unions'. You do. I'm willing to bet you're too cross to believe me now but, roll on two years - when this is all behind us - something will remind you of this, you'll laugh, shrug, and think, 'She had a point.'

Everyone does it. It's like resenting the PTA, moaning about the PTA, until the day you join and realise it's just ordinary people, doing their best.

Musicaldilemma

You are not listening when I tell you that the unions have indeed alienated the vast majority of parents.

Do you have any evidence for this?

[quote Musicaldilemma]@thecatfromjapan - Thank you for your condescending post. I am Oxbridge educated, speak five languages and am just time poor due to having a City job and 4 kids. However, you have certainly alienated me. What exactly makes you more literate than me?
The fantasy figure you have created that I supposedly represent? You are not listening when I tell you that the unions have indeed alienated the vast majority of parents.[/quote]
An interesting response.
It implies you believe that due to your academic abilities you are superior to others, while actually holding a need to prove how much you have achieved.
Why would it matter to a random on the internet whether you have a degree, or how many languages you speak? You have no idea of our qualifications or life experiences, and actually in an online debate they do not matter one jot.
It's a great leveller

Do you have any evidence for this?

It's not going well for her on the thread she started about it. Certainly not a vast majority.

Maybe she does live in a Daily Mail reading bubble after all.

I think the announcements yesterday, combined with no hint of reconsidering the vaccination priorities, shows that the government has made a settled decision about hiw to deal with this.

And Boris has been pretty ruthless in dealing with Party dissent before, so there is no likelihood of him wanting to 'appease' his far right

So I doubt very much that any of the current core plans will be changed by any amount of public pressure, eg Us4Them (now surely a busted flush). It's not a complete alignment with the union's longstanding goal of safer schools, because it's more about safer levels and patterns of community transmission than specific measure in schools, though that might come too.