The former head of Planned Parenthood, Dr. Leana Wen, has blasted teachers' unions for their continued mistreatment of children.
This has to be a new low for teachers, right? The group of people in our society who claim to have dedicated their lives to working for the good of young humans?
Think this through: the former head of an organization whose primary purpose is to expand the killing of young humans in the wombs of their mothers, is criticizing them for the offense of endangering young humans. Yowzah.
And the worst part is that Dr. Wen is right. Evidence continues to amass that shows not only was remote learning as a full-time substitute for in-person learning (rather than a temporary stop-gap for snow days, deep cleans, or even for "two weeks to stop the spread") a colossal failure academically, it has resulted in a mental health crisis of generational proportions:
Thankfully, Wen isn't the only progressive of consequence who is willing to tell the truth. In New York, both Governor Kathy Hochul (D) and NYC Mayor Eric Adams (D) have listened to the science and demanded that schools remain open, with the latter courageously acknowledging the trade-off for any continuation of a cowering, closed-school approach to each new variant of COVID. "Strand after strand, we can't…stop our children from developing socially and academically."
In Chicago, the otherwise largely incompetent administration of Lori Lightfoot (D) has found its voice of conviction in standing up to the Chicago Teachers' Union and their demand to be paid to work from home. "Enough is enough," Lightfoot said while pounding her podium at a recent press conference. "We are standing firm. And we are going to fight to get our kids back in in-person learning. Period. Full stop," the mayor affirmed.
Even Jeff Zients, who serves President Biden (D) as his COVID Response Coordinator, stressed at a recent White House briefing that the administration "couldn't be clearer – schools in this country should remain open."
Of course they should. Plenty of scientific evidence now proves without question that schools are not a major facilitator of community COVID spread. The few stories of teachers and counselors actually dying of the virus invariably end up revealing that school wasn't even in session when they fell ill.
That certainly doesn't mean there isn't room for improvements in how we conduct in-person schooling. Dr. Wen acknowledged that herself, saying that while it would be great if all schools had perfect ventilation and daily tests, there's no point in dealing with or waiting on fantasy scenarios to transpire. Instead, she writes, we are better off dealing in reality:
It's not 2020: vaccines + masks + weaker Omicron strand = schools must be open.
She even took this now shockingly bipartisan issue to the pages of the Washington Post, dropping the hammer on the National Education Association (NEA) or American Federation of Teachers (AFT) protestations: "If the rest of society isn't shutting down, then we shouldn't shut down schools, either."
That was the point I tried to make in my Friday Memo last week, highlighting that it's embarrassing to see my colleagues in various places of the country refusing to work, even as people in far more dangerous (susceptible) environments and situations are punching their timecard daily:
"If teaching is a noble profession, if the work we teachers do is really invaluable, vital, and fundamentally important to the future of our civilization, then it isn't something that we can haphazardly shut down for a year here and a year there, and pretend it doesn't have catastrophic consequences for those we are there to love and inspire."
How sad that it takes the former president of an anti-child organization like Planned Parenthood to point that out.
