Fox News contributor Mollie Hemingway said Wednesday that it has been “amazing to watch” just how willing public officials and teachers unions had been to enforce lockdowns on young children due to the continued spread of COVID-19.
Hemingway, who joined the network’s panel show “Outnumbered,” said that the strict mitigation measures — including masks and lockdowns for the children who were often among the least at-risk to contract or spread the virus — had ensured that people “understand that government, school unions exist in no way to help children, only to help teachers, and they do not care about the well-being of students.”
Co-host Rachel Campos-Duffy, a mother of nine children herself, raised the issue at the beginning of the segment. “It seems some educators aren’t learning from history,” she said, noting that the rising COVID numbers driven by the highly-contagious Omicron variant had some unions and school districts in discussion about a return to virtual learning.
“Some New York City teachers are pressuring their union as well as the mayor to bring back remote learning,” Campos-Duffy continued, citing an article from the New York Post Editorial Board criticizing those who were considering backing away from in-person learning.
From the article:
Whose side are they on? Certainly not the students, particularly the black and Hispanic children they claim to care about — and who have suffered disproportionately as a result of teacher-union overcaution.
“Follow the science” has been a refrain of the left for the past two years. Well, then follow it. Kids need to be in school. Don’t take it away from them.
“Mollie, I have to tell you as a mom – I know you are a mom too — I have found it just breathtaking how willing the left has been to destroy childhoods,” Campos-Duffy added. “They know that there is no need to have remote learning, that it hurts kids, that suicides are up, that suicide attempts are up over 50% with teenage girls, have you been surprised at just how cruel they have been? Knowing what they know in terms of the data?”
“It’s been amazing to watch. I am sure Republicans are thrilled that teacher unions and Randi Weingarten and other teacher union officials are working so hard to put kids in lockdown, even though there is no scientific basis for doing so,” Hemingway replied. “But it is horrific for children, it is making sure that people understand that government, school unions exist in no way to help children, only to help teachers, and that they do not care about the well-being of students. That is so abundantly clear. I don’t think anyone can disagree with that.”
Hemingway went on to say that her real concern was the fact that not many were standing up for the kids and calling out the unions for supporting policies that were not good for the students.
“Why aren’t more people working to defend these children who don’t have as much of a political voice, who are experiencing horrific rates of depression and suicide, all sorts of antisocial behavior, all of the problems that come with virtual learning, which is always actually a worse way to learn than in person teacher instruction,” Hemingway concluded. “It is alarming what we allow these children to be put through through. It’s really time for responsible adults to start caring so much more about these children, who had not just months, but years of their lives in some cases destroyed by these teachers unions and other people who just used these children as collateral.”