New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof, who is unabashedly left-wing, actually wrote what the majority of President Donald Trump’s supporters have believed for months: That Democratic anti-Trump zealotry is behind the perpetual closures, not “science.”
“Many Democrats seemed to be more suspicious of in-person schooling last summer when President Donald Trump called for it,” he wrote, adding, “We shouldn’t let ourselves be driven by ideology rather than science.”
Naturally, he goes on to hold up a Democratic governor, Gina Raimondo of Rhode Island, as an example of a state leader who opened schools where kids “are better off because she did,” though GOP governors and leaders in states like Florida, Missouri, the Dakotas, and more have had their schools open to in-person education for months, too — and without any big COVID problems.
But millions of other kids remain chained to Zoom and laptops because the left-wing teacher’s unions in those districts refuse to allow in-person learning because they’re holding out for billions in taxpayer loot via the next COVID relief bill.
That selfish politicization, however, is hurting our kids, Kristof — who should have written his column last summer — noted.
He went on to blast Democratic governors and mayors, saying they “too often let schools stay closed even as bars opened.”
“The blunt fact is that it is Democrats — including those who run the West Coast, from California through Oregon to Washington State — who have presided over one of the worst blows to the education of disadvantaged Americans in history. The result: more dropouts, less literacy and numeracy, widening race gaps, and long-term harm to some of our most marginalized youth,” he added.
Kristof noted that, according to estimates, some 3 million American kids have had no primary education at all, either in person or online, for most of a year — a pathetic statistic that should shame every single member of a teacher’s union who is responsible for that outrage (meanwhile, collection of local property taxes to fund closed schools has continued apace).
He went on to place some of the blame on teachers who say they don’t want to go back to classrooms until they’ve been vaccinated as being guilty of “an abdication of responsibility to America’s children.”
‘The science’ says that teachers don’t need to be vaccinated to return to class; the medical god Anthony Fauci himself has said so.
“Many Democrats seemed to become more suspicious of in-person schooling last summer when President Donald Trump called for it. We shouldn’t let ourselves be driven by ideology rather than science,” Kristof concluded.
Again, this is a column that could have been and should have been, written months ago. But ultimately, it’s not Kristof’s fault that Democratic anti-Trump sycophants have kept schools shuttered, causing spikes in teen suicides.
It’s the recalcitrant teacher’s unions, their members, and any other primary school teacher who refuses to do what they’re being paid to do.