Good Luck Trying to Replace Us

“The new laws are… put into place by Florida politicians who have zero classroom teaching experience, who seek to satisfy their voting base’s culture war battle cries… Teachers will be too fearful to meet the needs of their students with their creative expertise. You may as well have teacher bots, instead.” Janet Allen, recently ex-Florida high school AP English Literature teacher

“I was hired at New College of Florida (my alma mater) immediately before Governor DeSantis replaced the trustees and president in an effort to make it ‘The Hillsdale of the South’. I just gave notice.” Aaron Hillegass, Director of Applied Data Science referencing very rightwing Hillsdale

COVID took its toll in the ranks of teachers, but even as Florida twisted and squirmed to find replacements, Governor Ron DeSantis’ litany of statutes he sponsored – his anti-woke campaign against teaching “inconvenient truths” about US history, his censorship of books and classroom lesson plans, his battle against struggles to instill diversity and the severe consequences to teachers, administrators and now even college professors who failed to comply with DeSantis populist policies – made the task almost impossible.

“A survey by the group We the Parents found teachers leaving Florida at a rate higher than in other states, with 6,000 vacancies statewide, and 61% considering leaving… DeSantis apparently thinks Florida's loss of quality teachers is a small price to pay for his national political ambitions.” The News-Press, October 25, 2022. There’s really no good news for public school students in Florida, destined to be schooled in a system that clearly has deprioritized education.

“In interviews with the Guardian, Florida teachers said they’re feeling more disrespected, unappreciated and under attack than ever before, worried that they’ll be fired or otherwise punished if they run afoul of the controversial – and often vague – new laws. As a result of these laws and their emboldening parents to challenge and even castigate teachers, many Florida teachers say they’re considering either giving up teaching or finding a teaching job in another state – all when Florida, which ranks 48th among states in teacher pay according to a recent study, is already suffering from a shortage of 5,300 teachers. Florida teachers complain that DeSantis – who is expected to announce plans to run for the Republican presidential nomination – has targeted them as part of a culture war aimed at winning over GOP voters.” The Guardian UK, May 13th. For rising college students seeking a career path teaching, Florida’s sunny weather, beaches and hot cities and not enough to attract students in a rising regional autocracy where free and truthful speech has left the building, where teachers feel the harsh DeSantis boot first.

Even for tenured professors at Florida’s state college and universities, Florida’s rightwing and populists statutory and regulatory mandates have driven many, as the above quote suggests, to apply for new major academic positions outside of “culture war” states that are attempting to limit who can teach and what they can teach. All of these vectors fighting a “culture war” is a boon to academic institutions seeking those elusive “best and brightest” in states where free speech and accurate instruction are still prioritized. Texas has some great universities. Texas is following Florida’s lead. Are you watching, blue state universities? Incoming. Résumés.

But it does not stop with education or Florida. Welcome to red state America. Many medical students, for example, are asking if they really want to begin their medical careers in states where the legislature and governor have fomented legislation to restrict doctors’ ability to treat their patients consist with their Hippocratic Oath and their expertise and training. With legislative limits on gender treatments, abortions and even vaccine dissemination basically telling doctors what they can and cannot do, often adding severe potential felony penalties with very significant prison time as consequences, red states are having increasing difficulty recruiting medical professions, who are in severely short supply everywhere, to their hospitals.

“Medical students say strict abortion laws are driving them away from pursuing careers as doctors in states where the procedure is banned… The finding comes from a survey of third- and fourth-year medical students, conducted from August through October of last year — just after the June 2022 Supreme Court Dobbs decision that overturned Roe V. Wade, which for nearly 50 years granted the right to an abortion across the U.S… The reluctance to be a medical resident — young doctors who train in hospitals or clinics after graduating medical school — in states with abortion bans could further strain health care shortages in many parts of the country.

“The survey results reflect the feelings of future obstetricians and gynecologists as well as doctors who plan to go into other specialties, such as surgery or internal medicine, said Ariana Traub, a third-year medical student at Emory University School of Medicine, who conducted the survey… ‘The most significant data that we found was that the changes as a result of Dobbs would impact’ where in the U.S. medical students would apply to residency, Traub said.

“Most respondents, 57.9%, were unlikely or very unlikely to apply to a single residency program in a state with abortion restrictions… The findings, [presented at a May] annual meeting of the American Congress of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, have the ‘potential to shift the geographical makeup of health care,’ Traub and her fellow researchers wrote… The survey included responses from 494 medical students in 32 states. Most were women. More than three-quarters, 76.9%, said that access to abortion care would influence where they would pursue their residency.

“The U.S. is already facing a major shortage of between 37,800 and 124,000 doctors in the coming years, according to the American Association of Medical Colleges. Most concerning for women's health, separate AAMC data found a significant drop in the number of med students pursuing OB/GYN residencies in states with strong abortion policies… The decrease for OB-GYN residency applications, 5.2%, was seen in all states, regardless of abortion laws. That percentage dropped by almost double — to a 10.5% decrease — in applications in states with near-total abortion bans.

“If the surveys bear out, there could be a serious shortage of OB-GYNs in states with the tightest abortion restrictions. These states already tend to have higher maternal and infant mortality rates.” Erika Edwards, May 19th, NBC News. We are dumbing down, killing science, becoming less globally competitive and exposing ourselves to the continuing reduction in US life expectancy.

I’m Peter Dekom, and those “right to lifers” and culture warriors may soon discover that their own right to life is denied when they cannot find a doctor.