The handwriting on the wall was but a hazy ink back in January, when talks were beginning to form among educators, administrators, and teachers’ unions about how to reopen schools. For millions of American students, the transition will not be easy. Most have been out of the classroom for beyond a year, and many now struggle with depression owing to months of social isolation — suicide rates among America’s youth are skyrocketing. Yet instead of addressing students’ academic, psychological, and emotional needs, school district administrators and teachers’ unions remain hyper-focused on establishing and maintaining COVID-19 safety protocols, “welcoming” students back into what sounds more like a Communist-run system than a nurturing educational environment.
In deep blue Washington state, which effectively entered Phase 3 of its reopening plan on March 22, subtle propaganda in the form of child-narrated YouTube tutorials and personal e-mails (see below) from the Edmonds School District to students and families suggests that kids, whether doing in-person or remote learning, teach one another about COVID health and safety. To protect themselves from a highly treatable virus that is uncommon among children, students are encouraged to remind one another to social distance, i.e., “stay far apart from other students”; practice “hand-washing and [use] hand sanitizer, [which] will be a big part of the day”; and that “it is important to get used to wearing a mask.”
“Give me just one generation of youth, and I’ll transform the whole world,” Soviet Russia leader Vladimir Lenin famously said.
Are parents so anxious for their children to return to school that they are willing to surrender them to a system teaching COVID, with little emphasis on academics, as the primary focus of life in school and in society? By showing their peers how to follow mandated protocols, children feel helpful, and therein lies their reward, making them more inclined to obey a system enforcing such rules. This fascistic tactic effectively ushers in an expedient takeover of a child’s freedom in school, ultimately giving government total control.
The Real Costs of Reopening
To reopen schools swiftly, state governments and school districts are spending wildly to establish state- and district-mandated health and safety guidelines. Reportedly, $166 billion of the Biden administration’s $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus package was allotted to school funding and signed into law on March 11. Interestingly, Section 2001 (e) of the “American Rescue Plan Act of 2021” outlines that individual states receiving monies from the “Elementary and Secondary School Emergency Relief Fund” “shall reserve not less than 20 percent” to address “learning loss through the implementation of evidence-based interventions.” According to the bill, these intervention programs “respond to students’ academic, social, and emotional needs, and address the disproportionate impact of the coronavirus on certain subgroups,” such as low-income children, children with special needs, and foster-care children, among others. The additional 80 percent looks to be distributed in the form of grants provided to individual states to use as they please. So far, all the money appears to be going only to safety and health procedures.
Reading the reopening announcements sent to parents, students, and teachers from the Edmonds School District, it is apparent that no action is being taken to address the short- and long-term academic, social, and emotional impacts on children kept out of school for more than a year. Instead, families receive e-mails with lists of instructions on topics such as “attendance,” “social distancing,” “hand-washing,” “mask-wearing,” “digital daily health check attestation forms,” and “getting to school.” These protocols are accompanied by brief YouTube tutorials on best practices for each of these subjects, such as the following video on hand washing:
Mask-wearing recommendations include:
- Masks should include multiple layers of fabric so you can breathe freely.
- We recommend wearing a freshly-washed mask to school each day, and carry at least one or two clean back-up masks.
- Students may need several masks each day, as once it gets wet or dirty it’s no longer considered effective.
- It is also important to carry extra masks in a clean bag or container. Students should also have a bag or container for their used masks.
- Masks should fit snug on the face, completely cover the student’s nose and mouth, and extend down to the chin.
- If you wear glasses, a mask may cause the glasses to fog. Using small pieces of gentle surgical tape across the top of the mask can help to prevent this.
- Never touch the mask of another student or staff member.
- Do not touch the front of your own masks, if you do wash or sanitize your hands right away.
Schools Are Operating Independent of Parents
Months and months of dumbed-down Zoom classes that include the introduction of critical race theory and climate-change curriculum have led many parents to remove their kids from government-funded schools. Studies now show amid school closures a rising and renewed interest in homeschooling. Still, parents feeling desperate with their children at home are blindly pleading for schools to open no matter what.
This urgency is proclaimed not only by exhausted parents but emphatically stated by President Biden, “experts” such as Dr. Anthony Fauci, the local authorities, and the mainstream media. In a recent USA Today op-ed, Frederick M. Hess (director of education policy, American Enterprise Institute) and Pedro A. Noguera (dean, Rossier School of Education, University of Southern California) wrote: “We need to get America’s kids back to school expeditiously and effectively — and that’ll require practicality and trust.” Hess and Noguera rightly acknowledge the media-driven fears facing educators and administrators, as they work to reopen their classrooms, but they don’t take the conversation far enough to include what the students will encounter as they return to school. Their focus on COVID safety far outweighs the necessary concentration on students’ academic, social, and emotional needs.
Between breaks for hand-washing and meticulous attention paid to proper mask-wearing, when do educators have the time to teach academics?
Students in the Edmonds School District have the option to choose between hybrid or remote models of instruction, yet it is impossible to deduce what constitutes “in-person” learning, per the literature sent to parents and students. Actually, many students will not engage personally with their teachers in the classroom at all. According to one teacher who wishes to remain anonymous, students in the upper grades who select the hybrid model will interact with teachers via Zoom while they sit in the classroom rather than staying home. An e-mail from the district to students and families appears to support this, stating that teachers and/or paraeducators will “provide in-person support and supervision for students” who may have questions about Zoom instruction.
Despite the glaring lack of clarity in defining what academics or socialization really look like at present, many parents are surprisingly reacting submissively, almost gratefully, to school districts that have held them and their children hostage for a year, refusing to question mandates or procedures that indoctrinate and harm rather than heal their children. For instance, in the Edmonds School District, school buses are running at a limited capacity: Children are masked, not able to sit with friends, windows are open at all times, and students are told to “bundle up!” Parents can have no firsthand knowledge of their child’s school experience for an entire six-hour school day. The impact of these choices and their consequences will be far-reaching.
Furthermore, consider the probable irritability of teachers forced to wear masks all day. In fact, in a recent e-mail to staff, a highlighted statement on “proper mask wearing” states that “the district has received complaints of some staff not following the protocols in place when it comes to masks.” Also, no food is allowed in the classroom: Where is the science? How do masked children fare with no snacks all day? Do parents really agree with all these rules? Are they even aware of these rules?
Parents Need to Take Back Their Children
By continuing to follow these guidelines blindly, it is possible that five years from now parents will not recognize the children they have sent back into the schools. The child’s values may have changed, representing the state’s values instead of their individual family’s beliefs. Though government expresses an interest in doing what’s best for the children, their long-term goals might be far more sinister.
Washington Democratic Governor Jay Inslee is now preparing to sign an executive proclamation requiring schools to make available part-time, in-person instruction by April 19, developing “new requirements for Washington’s K-12 school districts to offer students the opportunity for in-person learning, at least partially.” However, as illustrated in the above e-mails and reopening announcements, it is not clear what “in-person” learning truly entails.
Washington Senate Minority Leader John Braun (Republican) offered this statement in response to Inslee’s declaration:
Governor Inslee’s announcement today requiring choice in how schools provide instruction is the best course of action right now. I hope being given the option to do what’s best for their children will improve morale among our K-12 families. This is a solid step toward getting our kids back on track — academically and mentally. The alarming toll this pandemic has taken on youth is our newest mental-health crisis. It’s unfortunate that some are only waking up to that reality now. But others are still ignoring the youth suicide rates and other indicators of how negatively our children are being affected.
Sadly, this right-leaning politician, while addressing the problem, is not acknowledging that the solution has anything to do with the problem. Possibly Braun is not familiar with the protocols schools are implementing, though it is his responsibility to know what they are doing.
Indeed, children have been adversely affected by the lockdowns, and they are continuing to suffer by returning to school under these current restrictions. New studies beginning to emerge on the damage of shutdowns are debunking the exaggerated claims of deaths owing strictly to COVID-19 vs. the mounting death toll attributed to the response of this highly treatable virus. Hopefully it is only a matter of time before the American medical establishment and advisers such as Fauci will have to answer for policies that have decimated communities and taken thousands of American lives.
In his article “Death and Lockdowns,” City Journal author John Tierney quotes Illinois researcher Sheldon H. Jacobson, who analyzed excess deaths among young people between March-November 2020: “We don’t know exactly why, but a lot of adults were dying last year who would not have ordinarily died, and it wasn’t just because of Covid…. It’s possible that some of the Covid-19 deaths were undercounted, but there were many deaths due to other causes. Shutdowns certainly caused mental health issues, and a lot of preventive medical treatments were delayed.”
These underexplored issues, e.g., the “other causes” of deaths, and in the case of schools, the ramifications of keeping our children away from their peers and isolated at home (possibly with their abusers) for more than a year, are unfortunately not the subjects being considered in the rush to reopen schools. Nor are the important areas of the education experience, such as academics and socialization.
On the front lines of the movement to rescue our children is Alex Newman, a teacher at FreedomProject Academy and co-author of Crimes of the Educators: How Utopians Are Using Government Schools to Destroy America’s Children. Newman offered this statement to The New American:
What is happening in Washington and across the nation in government schools is unconscionable. It is dangerous not just to the child victims trapped in these indoctrination centers, but to our whole nation and civilization. Parents must understand the urgency and act now to rescue their precious children from this abuse, before it’s too late. We never should have trusted government to educate our children to begin with, and at this point that should be clear to everyone. Time to rescue our children by getting them out.
Unfortunately, parents seem more intent on returning their kids to the classroom than taking them out, but current attempts to resume in-person learning are failing, and, in the process, further destroying our children. Such actions celebrate the vision of Lenin, which led to enslavement and death, rather than that of our Founders, which strove for prosperity and happiness. It is time either to stand up for a full return to academic studies and genuine social interaction, in which kids enjoy learning and playing with their friends rather than living in fear of a completely treatable virus, or, as Newman exclaims, pull the kids out of the schools completely.
