Hello Jonathan - I initially responded to the article because I am a former college teacher, and because I had observed these bad trends at least 5 years ago. I quit teaching myself, not because of fear of any student, but because I figured I'd worked long enough for low pay and chose to put my own financial and personal wellbeing first.

So, you said "That anti-tribal, reward-the-person-doing-the-useful-work system is America at its best. And we are all at our best when we are neither terrified nor complacently at slothful peace."

Would we not agree then? Because my simple point is that a needed job (teacher) should have sufficient pay to meet the teacher's needs - or meet an average standard that can reasonably meet needs. That concept underpins the idea of a minimum wage. There are sufficient funds (look up Modern Monetary Theory). Districts and schools voluntarily pay teachers too little. They pay too little because they do not care about the teachers and have little caring about the role of education overall, or about the students in the classroom. I see you favor privately operated schools.

A privately operated school will not solve the problems you pose, and this is provably true. While I spent 15 yrs of my working life working to develop affordable housing and worked with several big Charter schools in the LA area - these schools did not do much better and in many cases, worse than LAUSD, which one of the worst school districts on the planet. None of the ventures from public to private, would serve the goal of educating students well because the entire Los Angeles Basin is dominated by extremely corrupt, evil, and greedy people. Any and all organizations will be consumed by their evil eventually - from the nicest small business, nicest family, to even things like animal shelters or rescue organizations. Evil is a disease and it spreads.

I can tell you're probably a pretty nice person, but it would seem you are totally steeped in the lies our society has told backwards, forwards, up and down about "Manifest Destiny" (come on dude - "a few scattered tribes" - obtain some minimal information and respect - that's absurd). Our society has stopped teaching people about actual values like character, courage, honesty, self-sacrifice, and decency and has encouraged greed, rationalizations, selfishness, and false identity politics or prioritization of personal vice over general social good (i.e. if children are important, why are pedophiles generally able to operate for decades without penalties and often with rewards).

Our society values money and power over all, and it runs on the fuel of fear and domination. It quiets questions and quells objections by telling the type of propaganda you've largely espoused. If you don't want to think about a different race such as Native Americans consider how the LDS church was treated, that eventually ended up with them settling Salt Lake City and Utah.

And finally, what is power? The U.S. is the most powerful nation in the world? The U.S. is the world nation that spends the most on its military and has the most worldwide military installations by a very large order of magnitude. This very military is questioning its existence and purpose right now - how do I know? Because I'm part of a group of sci fi writers who were asked to consult with them and I am one of only two females involved.

So, as somebody who was a good teacher and who was worth far, far more than the cheapos who paid me ever paid - I'll give you an assignment to look up one of the "Famous People" (not) that I'd ask students to research during the first week or two of class. The idea behind the assignment came because I was casually watching TV one day and stumbled on a documentary about Percy Julian, the great African American chemist, and it was called "Forgotten Genius." I was like "wow, this guy was amazing - why had I never heard of him?"

So that was where my learning journey began. Percy was always on the list - but here's a couple for you to look up, and if you find "Badass of the Week" so much the better - it will be funny.

So Rani Lakshmi Bai - https://www.badassoftheweek.com/rani

Or Wu Zetian (not so "nice" as Rani Laksmi Bai)

And I just learned that "Rani" means Queen in Hindi so she is Queen Lakshmi Bai or Queen of Jhansi.

When I say "flexible" thinking it means the capacity to learn new things and to see the world more clearly.