‘Loser Teachers’: Trump Jr. comment sparks backlash among educators

Donald Trump Jr. is facing backlash for comments he made about teachers at President Trumps’s Make America Great Again rally in El Paso on Monday night.

“You know what I love,” Trump Jr., asked the crowd before his father took the stage. “I love seeing some young conservatives because I know it’s not easy. Keep up that fight. Bring it to your schools. You don’t have to be indoctrinated by these loser teachers that are trying to sell you in socialism from birth. You don’t have to do it.”

Norma De La Rosa, president of the El Paso Teachers Association, said the Trump administration “has constantly attacked public education.”

“Our country is no longer a country of citizens,” said De La Rosa. “We’re working together, we’re collaborating together celebrating each other’s diversity — instead he’s trying to conquer and divide us.”

We often hear about diversity and inclusivity in the classroom, but I waned to know if that included diversity of thought, or political ideology.

I found a group of Hanks High School students around lunchtime, and asked them about political discussion in the classroom: how their peers reacted to differing ideologies or opinions on hotly contested issues.

One girl gave a textbook answer.

“Everybody has their own opinion everybody respects each other,” she said.

Her friend, Alondra Pacheco, told a different story, talking about a substitute teacher who recently told her class he supported President Trump.

“Everybody started saying rude comments,” Pacheco said. “There’s some people that disrespect him, but I feel like we should all get respect.”

De La Rosa said that’s the point of classroom discussions.

“It’s the teacher’s responsibility to manage that discussion so that everyone has an opportunity to say what they want to say,” De La Rosa said.”We counter, we yes, no, we don’t agree but then the discussion moves on.”

One in five members of the American Federation of Teachers, and one in three National Education Association members

voted for Trump in the 2016 election, according to USA Today.

De La Rosa said she wants people who earned a diploma in the public school system to retain one piece of information.

“An astronaut, or an auto mechanic or whatever it is, career that you chose, it’s a teacher that has led you to that, guided you that way to help you succeed and be successful in life as an adult,” De La Rosa said