Randi Weingarten, the president of the American Federation of Teachers is out there talking about the mental-health crisis that children face.
Randi Weingarten: “Our kids are in crisis. And we had a mental health crisis before COVID .. but for two years of disruption, two years of looking at the screens, two years of not having a normal kind of routine and rhythm, recovery is really tough.” pic.twitter.com/5YAI5gQwnp
— Corey A. DeAngelis (@DeAngelisCorey) May 4, 2022
I’m sure that Weingarten would say that the two years of disruption for students, and the retreat to “screens” whether in “Zoom school” or as a replacement for school entirely, was necessary for the health and safety of her teachers. But we know better now. The closure of schools — and the unnecessary masking of young children at them — that she defended 16 and 18 months after they had become unjustifiable will be remembered as the greatest unforced policy error of the pandemic.