> Teachers don't owe you pandemic childcare.

Schools owe students an education. As you can see from this thread, it's controversial whether adults in tech can work productively remotely. Elementary school kids by and large don't learn well remotely. Unless that changes, it's a moot point whether childcare is just a bonus or something that is owed.

As for the "pandemic" part: I agreed with the closures of schools, preschools, and day cares at the very beginning of the pandemic. It seemed reasonable at first to believe kids spread COVID-19 as much as they seem to spread colds and flus. But it was't long before there was evidence that spread through schools is modest [1], especially with reasonable precautions (e.g. masks). And it was painfully obvious education was suffering. Schools should have reopened a full year sooner than they actually did in my area (and many other areas are worse). Society has a risk budget, and this should have been the priority for spending it, not bars or travel or indulging mask/vaccine denial.

[1] I remember a fair bit of this in the news; a quick search found https://adc.bmj.com/content/105/7/618 from June 2020. I believe it's been consistent since, e.g. https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2103420118 from October 2021.

Then we don't owe them a salary. If they refuse to do their job, they shouldn't get paid.

Who's saying otherwise? I'm assuming childcare workers moved on or stuck it out since you can't remotely take care of a kid. But teachers can still do their jobs remotely (as painful as it is to wrange a few dozen kids on a screen where the internet is 2 clicks away).

We should keep in mind that teachers are NOT babysitters. They are educators first, moral compasses second, and a distant 10th a pseudo-guardian. if the complaints here are on the latter, that's not what they are paid for.

> But teachers can still do their jobs remotely

Citation needed. There's a ton of evidence that learning has dropped dramatically with remote school. Especially for elementary students, I suspect it is near-zero.

> We should keep in mind that teachers are NOT babysitters. They are educators first, moral compasses second, and a distant 10th a pseudo-guardian. if the complaints here are on the latter, that's not what they are paid for.

The purpose of a system is what it does. Whether teachers like it or not, a significant part of their job is childcare. Society would not fund schools at anywhere near their current rate if they didn't also provide childcare.