Chicago Teacher Accuses White Parents of Trying to Kill Black People by Wanting Schools Open
A Chicago school teacher argued this week that parents who want their children to return to the classroom are little more than entitled white maniacs who are willing to gamble with the lives of minorities to further their own selfishness.
The Chicago Teacher’s Union is currently engaged in a stalemate with Mayor Lori Lightfoot and Chicago Public Schools Chief Janice Jackson, according to WBEZ-FM. Both officials have ordered the city’s schools reopened, but the union, as teachers unions do, is throwing a fit and putting kids last.
Enter Chicago seventh- and eighth-grade science teacher Mike Friedberg, who published an unhinged Op-Ed in the Education Post — which is a mouthpiece for the liberal activist teachers’ group BrightBeam — that called school reopening racist.
“A new COVID-19 strain is more contagious than ever. The Trump administration’s sheer neglect in the face of this deadly pandemic is enraging. Federal inaction has cost lives, and we are far from getting back to daily normal life. Schools are no exception to this situation. Given the plans to offer vaccines to teachers over the next several weeks, it does not make sense now to force children and staff back into the building,” Friedberg wrote.
“Students, parents and teachers are fearing for their lives,” he added.
The post is a run-of-the-mill liberal rambling at first, but the man who is currently teaching children science quickly pivoted to asserting those who want kids back in schools are plotting a genocide.
Science will always take a back seat when the race card can be pulled.
After arguing about why he thinks it isn’t safe for kids and teachers to be near one another, Friedberg blamed white people, writing “our city is catering to the minority of parents who clamor for this, white parents specifically.”
“In the first week of school where parents were given the option to send their children back, less than 20% of eligible students returned for in-person instruction. This number is half of what the district anticipated returning last month.”
“As the reopening debate gets hotter, we are seeing a new breed of ‘nice white parents’ emerge,” he continued. “The parents who wished to open school buildings are disproportionately white. In meeting after meeting, I have witnessed Black and Latinx parents voice concerns. We saw these concerns in August and are now seeing them nationwide.”
The science teacher lost me at “white parents,” and hopefully the rest of the room at “Latinx.”
Friedberg sounds like a guy who really doesn’t want to go back to work. Despite his fear-mongering, those who are paid to evaluate school safety relative to the coronavirus see things differently.
Experts at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention announced this week that they feel that in-person learning is ready to resume across the country. Three CDC experts argued for reopening in a piece published this week in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
“Closing schools could adversely affect students’ academic progress, mental health, and access to essential services,” the CDC experts said, noting fears about initial school closures that occurred last spring.
The experts concluded that “school-related cases of COVID-19 have been reported, but there has been little evidence that schools have contributed meaningfully to increased community transmission … the preponderance of available evidence from the fall school semester has been reassuring insofar as the type of rapid spread that was frequently observed in congregate living facilities or high-density worksites has not been reported in education settings in schools.”
Sounds pretty science-y and well-articulated. What gives with the wimpy teachers who are portraying their physical classrooms as war zones?
There apparently isn’t any science to back up their fears. When one has experienced the comforts of sweat pants and unkempt facial hair for nearly a year, and those perks are threatened, presumably everything is on the table — including accusing others of being motivated by genocide.
Lightfoot, to her credit, wants to send Chicago kids back to school. Kids belong in classrooms and on playgrounds around other kids. Any teacher working to impede the development of children ought to quit or be shown the door.
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