Trump/Schools

On 11/18/20 Nicholas Kristof wrote an op-ed in the New York Times titled “When Trump Was Right and Many Democrats Wrong.” 

It is interesting that this was printed in the NYT two weeks after the election. Although I do not know Mr. Kristof, I do know how the NYT operates. Could it be that it was “suggested” to Mr. Kristof that perhaps it would not be a good idea to pen this op-ed until the election was over. After all it is close to heresy for the NYT to say anything complimentary of President Trump . . . but before the election . . . No way! 

I would guess that the NYT will maintain that the timing of this op-ed after the election was coincidental . . . just like the announcing of successful vaccines within the two weeks after the election was also coincidental . . . “if you believe that, I have a bridge to sell you.”

Anyway the op-ed by Mr. Kristof had to do with schools and the wisdom of school closures.

The subtitle read:

“Children have suffered because many mayors and governors were too willing to close public schools.”

Despite the fact that it is a NYT op-ed, it is actually pretty good. Here are some excerpt from that op-ed:

• Trump has been demanding for months that schools reopen, and on that he seems to have been largely right. Schools, especially elementary schools, do not appear to have been major sources of coronavirus transmission, and remote learning is proving to be a catastrophe for many low-income children.
• “I have taught at the same low-income school for the last 25 years, and, truly, I can attest that remote schooling is failing our children,” said LaShondra Taylor, an English teacher in Broward County, Fla. Some students don’t have a computer or don’t have Wi-Fi, Taylor said. Kids regularly miss classes because they have to babysit, or run errands, or earn money for their struggling families.
• Adeola Whitney, chief executive of Reading Partners, an outstanding early literacy program, referred to the traditional “summer slide” in which low-income students lose ground during the summer months and told me: “The ‘summer slide’ is now being dwarfed by ‘Covid slide’ projections.”
• I’ve been writing since May about the importance of keeping schools open, and initially the debate wasn’t so politicized. But after Trump, trying to project normalcy, blustered in July about schools needing to open, Republicans backed him and too many Democrats instinctively lined up on the other side. Joe Biden echoedtheir extreme caution, as did many Democratic mayors and governors.
• So Democrats helped preside over school closures that have devastated millions of families and damaged children’s futures. Cities such as Boston, Philadelphia, Baltimore and Washington, D.C., have closed schools while allowing restaurants to operate.
• In both Europe and the United States, schools have not been linked to substantial transmission, and teachers and family members have not been shown to be at extra risk (this is more clear of elementary schools than of high schools). Meanwhile, the evidence has mounted of the human cost of school closures.
• Children learn best when physically present in the classroom,” notes the American Academy of Pediatrics. “But children get much more than academics at school. They also learn social and emotional skills at school, get healthy meals and exercise, mental health support and other services that cannot be easily replicated online.”

Kristof’s op-ed continues for many more paragraphs, but for the sake of brevity, I will stop here. The message continues to be the same, namely that the closure of schools appears to have been a mistake. (BTW: With the risk of sounding conceited I would say to both Mr. Kristof and the NYT . . . “Check many of my prior blogs about schools, etc. . . . I told you so!”)

Similarly, the way the “know-it-alls” have handled the return, or perhaps better said, “the non-return” of students to colleges across the country, has been inept to say the least. Would it have been better if colleges had followed the regimen as outlined in my book, now on Amazon, “The Keneally Chronicles?”

Perhaps now that the election is over, Mr. Kristof should next be writing an op-ed on that topic.