9/6/22
So in case you didn’t notice this story last week, it appears we have some bad news when it comes to how much we screwed our children’s education during the “pandemic” which has been blamed for killing something around 0.0008% (that’s eight ten-thousandths of one percent) of the world’s population over more than two and a half years; essentially ZERO of those deaths being in children (out of BILLIONS of children on the earth). The recently released standardized test scores showed some big drops in academic proficiency with the worst effects, of course, in black and brown children – you know, the ones so many people claim to “care” about, until those very same very caring people were afraid of catching a cold, then I guess screw those kids. Forget that as a nation, our chain is only as strong as its weakest link. I’m afraid so it’s every man (or child) for themselves!
You can look up articles on this information if you want, but here are the short strokes:
From no less than the New York Times (sorry, not “Ultra-Maga Daily”), The title (my bold): “The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading”
Some text: “The results of a national test showed just how devastating the last two years have been for 9-year-old schoolchildren, especially the most vulnerable…The declines in the national test scores spanned almost all races and income levels and were markedly worse for the lowest-performing students…National test results released on Thursday showed in stark terms the pandemic’s devastating effects on American schoolchildren, with the performance of 9-year-olds in math and reading dropping to the levels from two decades ago…This year, for the first time since the National Assessment of Educational Progress tests began tracking student achievement in the 1970s, 9-year-olds lost ground in math, and scores in reading fell by the largest margin in more than 30 years…‘Student test scores, even starting in first, second and third grade, are really quite predictive of their success later in school, and their educational trajectories overall.’”
Well that’s pretty cool. We screwed our kids real good with this one guys! First, let's be CRYSTAL CLEAR with our semantics here. It's not the "pandemic's devastating effects" that damaged our children, it's US. WE did this, or at least allowed it to happen. Not some microbe 1/1000 the size of a human hair that bypasses your dopey mask like a gnat through a volleyball net; our fear, ignorance, inability to think rationally; that's what screwed our kids. Anyway, it's really hard to catch up in math; if you can't add proficiently or do your times tables well you're in trouble as far as learning higher level math (or, you know, functioning in society) is concerned. And as the saying goes, "Third grade is where you stop learning to read and start reading to learn." so the biggest drop in reading in 30 years could be problematic.
And on the heels of this test data, of course then comes the requisite political nonsense. We have the White House and their water-carriers trying to gaslight the nation into believing THEY didn’t do this. Really, anyone ever heard of the internet? I am not making a political statement here, but pay attention to what’s going on so we can ensure this never happens again. As even the NYT tells us “In some parts of the country, the worst of the disruptions were short lived, with schools reopening that fall. But in other areas, particularly in big cities with large populations of low-income students and students of color, schools remained closed for many months, and some did not fully reopen until last year.” Remind me again who runs pretty much every “big city” in America…I’m pretty sure it’s not those Neanderthals.
Let me be clear, there was never any evidence anywhere in the world that having kids in school, full-time, even without masks, was ever a problem for kids or teachers (or their families). In fact all the data collected over the last two-plus years shows just the opposite. Kids were not getting sick nor were they “reservoirs” or “spreaders” of the virus with at least a 99.7% survival rate (pretty much 100% for anyone not really old or really sick).
But now watch the pivot. “‘The results should be a ‘rallying cry’ to focus on getting students back on track, said Janice K. Jackson, who led the Chicago Public Schools until last year and is now a board member of Chiefs for Change, which represents state education and school district leaders. She called for the federal government to step up with big ideas, invoking the Marshall Plan, the American initiative to help rebuild Europe after World War II…“That is how dramatic it is to me,” she said, adding that politicians, school leaders, teachers’ unions and parents would have to set aside the many disagreements that flared during the pandemic and come together to help students recover. ‘No more of the arguments, and the back and forth and the vitriol and the finger pointing,’ she said. ‘Everybody should be treating this like the crisis that it is.’”
First of all, Chicago was one of the worst offenders when it came to screwing kids; they were still fighting about in-person schooling as late as January of this year. Although if you ever saw the “interpretive dance” video some Chicago teachers put out to somehow “support” anti-COVID measures like, I don’t know, keeping schools closed, you might figure those kids are better zooming from their basements anyway. Second, be very aware here. We should “set aside the many disagreements”? There should be no more “finger pointing”? I don’t think so. My finger is pointing right at you Janice while I tell you that I, and many others, shouted in real time from the rooftops what a bad idea school closures, zoom classes, and masks were for the well-being of our children, and you and your ilk "disagreed". That’s like saying you let me use your beach house for a weekend and I threw a rager that left the house in shambles, but now, let’s set aside our “disagreements”, no reason to “point fingers”, let's work (together) towards fixing the problem I created. After all, it wasn’t really “my” fault, I was drunk. I was as much a victim as you. Let's just move on.
WE CANNOT LET THEM OFF THE HOOK, for this type of nonsense will surely rear its ugly head again; maybe as soon as this winter. By the way, look for some of those big "Marshall Plan" ideas to be to lengthen school days and get rid of summer vacation; after all, it's a "crisis". And of course more money, always more money. Because that's what we need, more intrusion and control by the idiots and liars who put us here to begin with. Excellent.
So we’ve set many of our children back as much as TWO DECADES in their educational progress. Sweet. And this by the way is just the tip of the iceberg. The developmental, emotional, social, and psychological damage we’ve done will certainly dwarf the educational. YAY US! But, you know, as long as Grandma was safe…
By the way again, I asked this question probably two years ago but of course never got an answer. Exactly what kind of grandma would say, “Sure, destroy my grandchildren’s lives; lock them in their houses, keep them from their friends, make them paranoid or terrified of seeing someone without a mask, retard their education, drive their levels of loneliness, anxiety and depression through the roof thereby pushing many to drug abuse and maybe even suicide, force them to stay home where they can be exposed to more physical and emotional abuse, don't let them go to school where at the very least they might get a decent meal, whatever it takes as long as I’m safe.” I said something like as any (now I guess maybe most, or at least some) parents know, we would gladly step in front of an oncoming train to protect our children, yet look what we let them do. There should be no forgiveness for these egregious actions; of course forgiveness would be predicated on an apology – anyone heard an apology? Forget about from Fauci or Walensky or Biden, how about even from your sister and brother-in-law who disinvited you from their wedding or banned you from Christmas dinner because they “knew” something?
We cannot ever let this happen again, and as importantly we cannot allow our political overlords, medical “experts” and mainstream talking heads gaslight us and memory-hole what they’ve done. Our children deserve better. All of them. As I have said many times over these last 30 months, any society that would attempt to save itself at the expense of its children is not a society worth saving. We should all be ashamed of ourselves.
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