Teachers are people. I fear the American government and educational infrastructure has forgotten, or rather has never, believed that. The COVID-19 pandemic has only exacerbated existing frameworks in a capitalist empire that kills working class people. Rent, bills, and the general idea of paying to survive have been killing people for more than 400 years.

The public education system’s oppressive practices of unmanageable and illegal class sizes, racist standardized test and tracking procedures, and segregationist policy, all existed before the pandemic. Not to mention the school system’s lack of living wages for teachers, lack of school nurses and support staff, lack of technology, lack of administrative support, and absence of legislative support. Now these preexisting issues are all bubbling to the surface in a hot stew of abuse and exploitation at levels never seen for both students and teachers, but what’s more, the American government does not care if they die.

It has been clear to anyone with a foundational knowledge of history, that the American government never cared about teachers or students. After all, the public education system in America started as a way to avoid child labor laws, produce a mass working class, and delay children’s entry into the workforce so that they didn’t take their parents’ jobs. With systems of surveillance modeled after the panopticon, an 18th century architectural design that emphasizes policing prisoners in a way that leaves them ignorant of their being policed, the school scheme really is something.¹ The American school system was not created to educate the youth or provide basic life skills, but was instead a way for the government to indoctrinate future generations with capitalist, imperialist narratives.

The American curriculum is not only white-washed, but consistently and intentionally lies about what the government’s motives are, and what it has done with its power since its inception. For example, America has been at war 225 out of the 244 years of its existence (numbers updated based on data originally published in 2015 stating America has been at war 93% of the time).² Wars fought to ensure America remains an imperialist superpower which profits off of foreign labor, oil, and death. Further, the myths of the American Dream, Manifest Destiny, and social mobility are all a part of America’s explicit curriculum.

Whereas the absence of America’s genocide of Natives, America’s refusal to acknowledge slavery, and the government’s withholding of reparations to Native Americans and African Americans, are all apart of America’s implicit curriculum. Present day the United States is characterized by police terrorism against Black people and sterilization of immigrants at ICE internment camps, where ICE terrorists are forcibly removing women’s uteri, which are both issues I can bet the American education system won’t be tackling head on this school year. The United States government is a colonial superpower that engages in genocide, imperialism, and white supremacy, but you would never know it from the narrative they sell in schools.

Now that it’s 2020, and America has a government funded by exploitation, the worst COVID-19 numbers in the entire world, a repressive police state with secret police patrolling the streets arresting peaceful protesters, a school system that is willing to sacrifice students and teachers for economic gain, and an environment crumbling before our eyes due to catastrophic, human caused climate change–it has never been more clear that we need to abolish capitalism and its regime.

Those in power continue to protect themselves and their wallets at our expense, attending meetings over Zoom while forcing teachers and students into classrooms, as COVID-19 cases continue to rise. Our government does not care if a few teachers and students die, as long as those in power are safe and can pander propaganda to working class people to convince them that school just wouldn’t work without forced proximity and productivity.

The media backlash against teachers unwilling to risk their lives, supported by government propaganda at the local and national level, displays how teachers and students are seen as sacrificial lambs in the experiment of a forced return to cramped classrooms during an airborne virus pandemic.

A forced return defined by a lack of preparation, no personal protective equipment, and a complete absence of hazard pay for teachers, or safety procedures for all involved. Schools across the country prepared template letters months before re-opening detailing the death of a teacher or classmate to be released in the event of an inevitable death due to forced return. Teachers sat through will-writing workshops as a part of back-to-school training and professional development.

Students feel unsafe and as if their lives do not matter when their schools are forcing them into classrooms barely big enough for 20 non-distanced desks. Students and teachers are suffering not only the material reality of risking their lives and the lives of their loved ones every time they step into a classroom, but also psychological manipulation and abuse at the hands of the American government.

I am a Florida educator who refuses to return for in-person instruction this school year. As I watched DeSantis issue a statement over the summer forcing students and teachers to return to in person instruction, I resolved not to put my life, the lives of students, or the lives of my loved ones on the line for capitalism. Unfortunately, due to the exploitative nature of capitalism, not everyone is fortunate enough to afford a break to look for remote work, especially in a high-stakes, lucrative hiring environment with the worst economic crisis since the Great Depression.

Of course there are parents who cannot afford virtual instruction for their students or cannot afford home school, but these are symptoms of capitalism, not a failure on the part of teachers. The government’s refusal to act, inadequate, privatized healthcare infrastructure, and lack of support for education are to blame for the absence of educational assistance for families. Capitalism is the problem.

Capitalism is the system in which the ruling class exploit the working class via privatization of capital goods. This economic system allows for the death of front line workers while the rich enjoy safety and comfort during times of extreme strain on global economies. Countries with socialist policies, (countries that care for their citizens), provide free food, water, and housing to people in need, in lieu of a global sickness. It is the seventh month of a worldwide pandemic during which millions of Americans have lost their jobs and yet our government could not be bothered to issue a rent or bill hold, let alone abolish bills altogether.

Why is that? It is because the American government would rather allow poor people to die than abolish capitalism. They’d rather let hundreds of thousands of Americans die in vain than sacrifice material gain for corporations or themselves. While mega corporations have received billions of dollars in pay outs and tax breaks from the American government since the pandemic began, the people have been given one check of $1,200–scarcely enough to afford one month’s rent, let alone food or bills.

Teachers are not responsible for the failure of the American regime to save its own citizens. Teachers are not responsible for economic decline. Teacher are not responsible for babysitting children because their parents are forced to work during a deadly pandemic. Teachers are not noble sacrifices for the capitalist regime.