School shutdowns during COVID-19 were antiscience and set students back academically and socially for no real health benefits. If push comes to shove, teachers unions would happily shut down schools again.
The two largest teachers unions in the country have both defended their antiscience school shutdowns and said that they would shutter schools again in a similar situation. Becky Pringle, president of the National Education Association, said, “What we needed to do was to listen to infectious disease experts.”
Again, the data indicated there was no significant health risk in keeping schools open compared to closing them. The left-wing American Academy of Pediatrics said in the summer of 2020 that the best thing for children would be to get them back in school in-person, as data showed that children were at less risk from COVID-19 than from the flu. Then-President Joe Biden’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said in the spring 2021 semester that data do “not suggest teachers need to be vaccinated” to return to schools. Pringle, evidently, did not want to listen to those experts.
The second-largest teachers union in the country is even worse. That would be the American Federation of Teachers, whose president is Randi Weingarten, arguably the single most destructive figure in shaping pandemic policy. Weingarten leveraged her political connections to keep schools closed as long as possible and to impose ridiculous COVID-19 testing regimes and vaccine policies on children when none were needed. Justifying shutdowns, she boasted that “I thought I was pretty loud” and that, in the future, “I would be even louder.”
COVID-19’S CONSEQUENCES STILL RIPPLE THROUGH SOCIETY 5 YEARS LATER
As of this past year, math and reading scores still have not recovered from these school shutdowns. Fourth-grade and eighth-grade reading scores have continued to decline and more students are chronically absent from school. The bulk of the loss is concentrated among poorer students and minorities, the very students that teachers unions tried to pretend their safetyism was protecting.
And yet, the two largest teachers unions still want to defer to “experts” who were repeatedly wrong and, in the case of figures such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, even purposely misled the public. It is proof once again that teachers unions and their leaders do not care about students at all, and they will happily set students back years again if they are given the opportunity to do so.