“If you don’t shut up and pay attention, you’ll be flipping burgers for the rest of your life” was a frequent outburst from my elementary school teacher in Cedar Falls, Iowa.
Teaching reluctant 10-year-olds how to do long division without a calculator probably wasn’t the focal point of that man’s career. However, today, I question why that former teacher repeatedly denigrated hourly wage workers by implying they were unintelligent, especially when he taught students whose parents worked those jobs and paid taxes that funded his salary.
