By Rich Lowry
Tuesday, August 04, 2020
No other group has shown as much contempt for its own
work during the coronavirus crisis as teachers.
Their unions are actively fighting to keep kids out of
the classroom and also to limit remote instruction, lest it require too much
time and attention from people who are supposed to be wholly devoted to
educating our children.
This has been a wrenching time in the U.S. labor market,
with tens of millions thrown out of work. It’s been an inspiring time. Workers
we never would have thought of as essential before — grocery-store employees,
delivery guys, meat-packing workers — have kept absolutely necessary parts of
the economy operating even while most of their fellow Americans were staying at
home.
Not only have doctors and health-care workers put
themselves on the line, but cops and firefighters have done the same.
It’s not correct to say that all these people have done
their jobs uncomplainingly — many have worried, understandably, about their
safety and wanted more protections. But all have shown up. All have been there,
during the horrific spring outbreak, during a brief respite, and during the
current summer resurgence.
Anyone who doesn’t acknowledge our debt to them is a
thoughtless ingrate.
Then, there are the teachers’ unions.
Their approach has been a diametrically opposed to that
of the everyday heroes of America. Their first and last thought has been of
their own interests. They have sought to limit their labor while still getting
paid — at the ultimate cost of the education of kids who may never fully make
up the gaps in their learning during their time away from the classroom.
Obviously, any gathering of people has its risks, and
school districts should make every reasonable accommodation to the realities of
the pandemic. There are many teachers who are better than their unions — or not
members of a union at all — and some are truly at high risk from the virus. All
of this is true enough, and yet the unions have represented institutional
laziness and selfishness at a time of incredible strain for parents across the
country.
The unions have a handy foil in President Trump, who has
taken up the cause of school reopening with his usual deftness, which is to say
none at all.
But it shouldn’t require wearing a MAGA hat to
acknowledge the benefits of in-person instruction. And the experience of other
advanced countries suggests it carries low risks.
The American Academy of Pediatricians released a
statement in June saying that it “strongly advocates that all policy
considerations for the coming school year should start with a goal of having
students physically present in school.” (As a rebuke to Trump, it issued a
subsequent statement with the biggest teachers’ unions saying that politics
should be kept out of reopening decisions.)
The New York Times has cited research suggesting that
the cancellation of classes in the spring cost students a significant portion
of their learning for the year, and they might be seven months behind the
curve. Online learning, especially for younger kids, is a poor substitute for
being in the classroom, and many districts didn’t even offer that.
As states and localities try to avoid a repeat of that
debacle, many unions are throwing every obstacle in the way. In California, the
unions pushed to delay students coming back to the classroom, and in Los Angeles,
the union has been negotiating to limit the time teachers spend on online
instruction, too.
Unions around the country have offered endless excuses
why they can’t even do a simulacrum of their job. Teachers might be abashed
about their appearance teaching by video from home. The privacy of teachers
might be violated if video instruction is recorded for use by parents and their
kids at a convenient time. Teachers can’t handle simultaneous classroom and
video instruction.
If the teachers’ union get their way, teachers’ letter grade during this crisis will be a shameful “incomplete.”
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