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Teachers Move the Goal Posts Again: Now *Kids* Must Be Vaccinated
Today while I was explaining to my (thankfully homeschooled) children why schools in our area (and across the country) are still operating on “Zoom” and likely aren’t going back to normal in the fall either, I asked them, “Given the choice, would you rather work or not work?” My seven-year-old daughter replied, “My job would be to teach kids, and I would do it! I would work!” She’s a better woman than the majority of teachers and their representatives in the unions, unfortunately for our nation’s kids.
This is happening across the country as districts try to get kids back in classrooms:
71% of the teachers unions members who voted approved the refusal to return to workhttps://t.co/hSkik9UGjn
— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) January 24, 2021
And they’re already laying the groundwork to take off next year too:
Fairfax teachers union president opposes reopening schools in person full time next fall even if all teachers are vaccinated.
— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) January 25, 2021
Randi Weingarten says we can't be sure of reopening schools in fall because we don't know whether vaccine stops transmissability.https://t.co/UXoAzUFRnu
It doesn't matter whether it stops transmission, if you're vaccinated. What is going on here?
— Megan McArdle (@asymmetricinfo) January 25, 2021
What’s going on here? Teachers are now pretending to know better than parents what’s best for kids. After abandoning classrooms for almost a full year, they now have the chutzpah to declare themselves the protectors of kids, who likely won’t be able to receive a vaccine for a long while yet, perhaps a year or more down the line. Their solution for what’s best for kids? Keeping them home, isolated, glued to screens for yet another year.
The folks who have spent the last year with kids, their parents, you know, the ones actually charged with ensuring their well-being, full well know they aren’t doing okay. The New York Times published a chilling story over the weekend about how schools in the Las Vegas area have begun reopening after a rash of student suicides.
Over the summer, as President Donald J. Trump was trying to strong-arm schools into reopening, Dr. Robert R. Redfield, then the C.D.C. director, warned that a rise in adolescent suicides would be one of the “substantial public health negative consequences” of school closings. Mental health groups and researchers released reports and resources to help schools, which provide counseling and other intervention services, reach students virtually. Mental health advocacy groups warned that the student demographics at the most risk for mental health declines before the pandemic — such as Black children and L.G.B.T.Q. students — were among those most marginalized by the school closures.
But given the politically charged atmosphere this summer, many of those warnings were dismissed as scare tactics. Parents of students who have taken their lives say connecting suicide to school closings became almost taboo.
A video that Brad Hunstable made in April, two days after he buried his 12-year-old son, Hayden, in their hometown Aledo, Texas, went viral after he proclaimed, “My son died from the coronavirus.” But, he added, “not in the way you think.”
In a recent interview, Mr. Hunstable spoke of the challenges his son faced during the lockdown — he missed friends and football, and had become consumed by the video game Fortnite. He hanged himself four days before his 13th birthday.
Hayden’s story is now the subject of a short documentary, “Almost 13,” Mr. Hunstable’s video has more than 100 million views, and an organization created in his son’s name has drawn attention from parents across the country, clearly striking a chord.
When the numbers of kids and young adults dying by COVID were clear in April, anyone familiar with mental health could deduce the obvious: if the lockdowns and school closures continued, there would be more deaths of despair during COVID than deaths actually attributable to COVID for anyone in that age bracket.
And now, after a year of keeping kids in such a state that they are taking their lives in record numbers, the majority of teachers and their unions in recalcitrant districts across the country are pretending as though they are the guardians of their well-being, and the best thing for them is to keep them locked away in perpetuity, in the same conditions that are leading to them taking their lives. It’s unconscionable, it’s evil, and it’s going to senselessly kill more kids.
Published in General
Because right-wing judges don’t overreach.
Speaking of the above mentioned Ms. Weingarten; in my morning newsfeed, there was a piece that mentioned she had “briefed White House staffers about the ongoing standoff (in the Chicago Public Schools). After she gave her “briefing” she pompously announced to the media that she was “very pleased” with the response she received.
In other words, Biden will be knuckling under to every teacher’s union that crosses his path. As usual, parents, especially conservative ones, have been out-organized and out-flanked by the unions.
It seems to me that Ms. Weingarten would be the perfect indvidual for Alinsky’s rule number #13: “Pick the target, freeze it, personalize it, and polarize it.”
Oh, that’s right. Conservatives are more interested in “playing nice” than winning; even when it comes to their children.
I’d need to go back and see if I wrote about it at the time (about 12 years ago). This was one chapter of an issue I had with the teacher that lasted two years. She was teaching Comparative Religion and always favored Islam. For instance, she gave son #3 extra credit for fasting on the first day of Ramadan. Since she had never offered extra credit for any other religious practice, I demanded he also get extra credit for having been circumcised.
Regarding Jesus Camp, she argued that there were as many Christian terrorists as Islamic terrorists, and used the movie Jesus Camp as proof. I suggested she use, you know, stats on actual terrorist attacks.
The memories of some of my more bitter altercations have dimmed. Thank God.
She views Muslims as the brown other and they are judged differently than white Christians. It’s the soft bigotry of low expectations.
My daughter is 41. When she was in second grade, the principal of her public school told us we couldn’t possibly know what was best for her since we were not educators. She was in private school the next year.
Oh! This sounds like the blow up between my SIL and I. Several female family members were having a discussion about the problems with the current education. She was a young new administrator (after having taught about 1 or 2 years). She promptly told us we didn’t understand because we weren’t educators and I knew even less because I didn’t have kids. Thankfully, she has since lived a little and has come around to our way of thinking.
Just out of curiosity, how many Texas Teachers have died of Wuhan Flu this academic year?
None?