David Brooks is a regular commentator on PBS Newshour every Friday night. He is typically banal but inoffensive. This past Friday, he was both banal and offensive.
Judy Woodruff asked him and his colleague Jonathan Capehart to choose people who deserve something nice or a piece of coal in their Christmas stocking. Brooks said he would give the President’s Chief of Staff Ron Klain a model train set for his stocking, but he would give ”the teachers’ unions” a piece of coal because they bear a large share of the blame for the “long, overly overly long” school closures that affected “student attainment” (he meant test scores, not attainment) and that have impaired the “lifelong prospects of a generation of young people,” widened inequality, and impaired social mobility (view here, at 10:51 minutes in or the last segment of the hour). He didn’t name any other villains, just the unions.
This is wrong on many counts.
The teachers’ unions didn’t cause the closures. The pandemic did.
Many teachers were fearful for their lives. Some were immunocompromised or lived with family members who were vulnerable. They reasonably wanted reassurance that schools would reopen safely, and that’s what the AFT demanded in a series of policy documents—starting in April 2020–calling for a safe reopening. By that, the union meant regular testing and sanitizing, masking, social distancing to the extent possible, and ventilation in classrooms. The Trump administration wanted the schools open with no money for safety measures.
Districts went online not because the unions told them to but because the CDC recommended it, and normal concern for the safety of staff and students prevailed.
No one knew at the time what the right course of action was, so school boards and superintendents erred on the side of caution, to protect the lives of staff and students. Was this unreasonable? As a grandmother, I don’t think so.
Stay open and take chances or close the school and shift to virtual learning? It was a tough decision, and it was not made by the teachers’ unions.
Success Academy in New York City is a high-profile charter chain. Its teachers are not unionized. Its CEO Eva Moskowitz decided to close the schools and go virtual in mid-March 2020. In January 2021, Moskowitz decided to close the schools for the year, go virtual, and shorten the calendar by a month. Other non-union charter schools followed SA’s lead.
During the shutdowns, teachers taught virtually, and some double-tasked by teaching some students online and some in their classes.
The demands and uncertainties of the pandemic, coupled with the absurd attacks on teachers for teaching honestly about U.S. history and the outlandish claims that teachers were”grooming” their students for sexual deviance, were profoundly demoralizing. Many teachers left the profession. The number of new entrants has shrunk. Not a word of sympathy or concern from David Brooks.
As for his assertion that the lives of an entire generation have been blighted because of school closings, that is simply hysterical speculation. Very few students liked virtual learning, nor did teachers. But it was necessary for a time. There is no reason to believe that students were irreparably harmed. They are resilient and will bounce back if their teachers get the resources they need and lower class sizes.
It would be far better to hear Brooks advocate on behalf of teachers on national television rather than trot out the tired rightwing cliche about “evil” teachers unions.
Teachers need support, not disrespect. They have had a much more difficult three years than David Brooks.
*******************************
For David Brooks’ benefit, here is the AFT reopening plan issued in April 2020.
https://www.aft.org/sites/default/files/media/2020/covid19_reopen-america-schools.pdf
This post was also written for Judy Woodruff, so that she won’t be blindsided the next time David or any other guest spouts anti-union, anti-teacher propaganda.
Excellent piece. Facts don’t lie
Amen! In Columbus our union pushed to establish libraries in every elementary school, alternative magnet schools to explore, attract, desegregate, equal opportunity for girl students and women educators, a student voice in educational decisions, more democratically run schools, etc. We also had a week-long strike in the winter of ’75. I usually enjoy listening to David’s usually cogent comments. I used to copy his columns and distribute them to my high school classes in Chillicothe, along with those of Jesse Jackson. Today’s unions are, if anything, too accepting, to placid. But I guess I’m old fashioned:
What an a** David Brooks is.
Typical “columnist” who was too dumb to be an actual journalist.
Brooks would fit right in at Fox News
My GAWD…Is Brooks drunk?
I normally value David’s middle of the road comments. I was shocked at this . There are so many coal-deserving entities this year and he picks on the union that supports a system that is about to vanish because very few people are willing to go into teaching. I know because I teach graduate classes to empty rooms.
The AFT and Randi Weingarten were the first to publish guides, advice, supports for at-home learning and SAFE returns to school.
Mr. Brooks – were you writing TWO columns a day. Teachers were writing multiple lesson plans – students with technology, students with only phone access, students who picked up packets. NONE of these existed.
There were no “platforms” parents were used to, that teachers used, the KINDERGARTNERS were used to accessing.
There were no Templates for lessons. Cautions on people walking through screens. Teacher turning CLOSETS into CLASSROOMS ThAt were inviting.
Students with disabilities! English language learners! Students in Transition (aka HOMELESS)!
Mr. Brooks – walk in their shoes for a week immediate pandemic (March, 2020; Pandemic year 1; Pandemic Year Fall 2020 which was an entirely new set of protocols for BLENDED At-Home / In-Person classes + health protocols; Pandemic Spring 2021 – more returns, quarantine protocols,… Pandemic Fall 2021 – anger, tension, bottled up kids and parents in schools, – – of AND LEARNING. Social WOrkers and counselors’ were swamped with counseling, home visits, talking people off the ledge, consoling. FOOD distribution for the only hot meal a day.
Mr. Brooks – get out a calendar – match your month by month from March 2020 to August 2022! Find me a government agency or corporation that LITERALLY RE-WROTE THE BOOK ON OPERATIONS WHILE IMPLEMENTING THEM with HUMAN LIVES at stake!
Walk in your shoes and model one week of your writing and how much changed vs. a TEACHER!
Most districts figured stuff out – WITH THEIR UNIONS at the table and the trenches! And, with the national UNIONS doing the research for them.
Ms. Weingarten was all around the country on the scene with teachers as they greeted kids, reassured parents, ENCOURAGED VACCINATIONS
And, by the way, that’s “encourage vaccinations” when ATTORNEYS General were SUING school districts for mask mandates. Suing school districts. Voice of support – the unions!
and the AFT FOUGHT FOR SAFE SCHOOLS. Take your pick and see what they had to do. Congress can’t agree on infrastructure. School policy makers WITH unions did it overnight.
PUBLIC SCHOOLS spent millions on SAFETY and precautions, VENTILLATION Turned out to be a critical factor for safety They didn’t double-dip like thousands of Charters across the country.
Do your homework, Mr. Brooks
(p.s. I am an administrator, not a union member)
“(p.s. I am an administrator, not a union member)”
My condolences!
Somebody’s got to do the job! At least Wait,What ? “seems” like someone who was once a teacher before climbing the ranks and has the best interest of teachers and students at heart.
I second the condolences–a good administrator is a boon to teachers, facilitating their work and deflecting the loony fringe outside. I’ve always wondered how many administrators would prefer to teach and continue to do so if the could make the same salary.
If David Brooks is pontificating in a forest and there’s no one else there to hear him, is he still wrong?
That’s a no-brainer …
Yes, he is!
Yes, he is a no-brainer.
He has a brain.
It’s just been scrambled by an ice pick lobotomy.
If David Brooks isn’t a poster child for affirmative action for pontificating milquetoast white folks with pedestrian opinions and archaic views about humanity that couldn’t even make it over a crosswalk without the assistance of an old lady who could barely walk herself, I don’t know who could possibly be one. But maybe that’s just me.
Perfect description. I don’t know why he has a job at the NYT.
I’m a Union Thug
by Jack Burgess
I’m a union thug.
I attack management with
accusations of excess greed.
force them to confront
their own mortality,
which god-like they abhor.
I shoot bulletins in all directions,
Unfairly arming workers
with uncomfortable facts.
I strangle repressive ideas about
the evils of public service or
the virtue of taxing the poor,
before the high Grover can
float them in his bathtub
with wily words.
I force owners to answer
when mines explode, rigs collapse,
or radiation spreads its cancers.
I have stolen from my underpaid supporters
two worn out ballpoint pens,
and a nap or two after arguing with
repression all night,
and I’m here to turn myself in.
Wow, Jack! THIS IS SUPERB!!!! Thank you, Union Thug and Poet!
David Brooks is reliably wrong On just about everything. He poses as an ethical person after abandoning his longtime wife for his assistant. He promoted the Iraq war which is caused so much PTSD among Americans who had to go there, including Biden’s son who died from Exposure to burn pits. It’s a disgrace that anyone asks his opinion on anything.
You are exactly right.
Whatever Brooks says, you can rely on the opposite being true.
And o one should listen to folks like Brooks, Thomas Friedman and NPRs Scott Simon who were cheerleaders for the Iraq invasion and war and eally never even admitted they were wrong.
These people are not journalists. Not even close.
What they are is just disgusting human beings.
Brooks has spoken many times about the danger to America of traitor trump. This quote is from a NYT editorial last Feb:
“No. 1 domestic priority for all Americans who care about democracy is to make sure Mr. Trump never sees the inside of the Oval Office ever again.”
Is the opposite true?
I stand corrected.
There are exceptions to every rule.
And it’s hardly a glowing recommendation for Brooks to suggest the blatantly obvious.
Maddening, just maddening!
David Brooks gets an “F” on his assignment. No supporting evidence for his ‘shooting off the hip’ harmful comments.
Where was he during these tumultuous times?
His comments were dark and hurtful….like blaming nurses and doctors for the heart wrenching Covid deaths in hospitals while working 24/7, putting their own lives on the line, and dying.
David, get off the UNION BASHING – we have Unions because teachers need them. Would be great if we lived in a country where teachers were highly respected as the experts they are, If teachers were “at the table” when journalists and politicians invent and demand cockamamie corporate profit ideas, and teachers spend every waking moment trying to make it work for children. We have decades of this nonsense and the battle scars to show for it. We are at a place now where we can hardly “give the job of teaching” away. We’re down to in-servicing 22 year olds for 5 weeks, no life experience, new college graduates and plug them into the most devastated communities, under-funded and gutted schools, pretend and celebrate these WUNDERKINDER as a miracle who are saving public education.
During Covid , more than ever, The Unions stepped up to provide life-saving information to save our children via Zoom, keeping kids and teachers, their families and communities, from dying while our Most Dangerous TFG was letting over 200 000+ people die – yet he knew the facts he chose to keep quiet.
David Brooks, your comment hit below the belts of millions
of teachers and their hardworking children and parents.
Go stand in the corner…..
Shame on YOU👊🏽👊🏼👊🏻
David Brooks can’t be shamed.
He simply doesn’t care about the people he writes about. He certainly didn’t give a damn about all the people who died in Iraq.
His articles are nothing more than click bait.
And that’s precisely why he gets a platform at NY Times, PBS and other mainstream media.
They love him because he generates clicks and advertising dollars.
Well said, Hanna! totally agree
We still have a few gadflies here in Oakland who insist on dumping on unions over the usual “school closures”; they keep insisting that they love their teachers but hate the unions for all the “damage” that they caused. Every time, I point out that the non-unionized charters were also closed, I get crickets. Cognitive dissonance is strong with them; the message doesn’t fit their narrative and they just don’t want to hear it.
I saw that! What do you expect from a man who said the January 6 committee was a failure before its first hearing? He also thinks the typical public school teacher has about 25 students per class. Oh, and he claims he “gets” Bruce Springsteen, which is yet another side of his cluelessness. What bothers me more is the lack of pushback from Woodruff or Caprehart.
Yes, Judy Woodruff sat in silence as Brooks lied about the teachers’ unions. Like sitting in silence while a Trump buddy says he won in 2020. How could she be so uninformed?
PBS “News ” hour is propaganda, not news.
That’s how.
the Snooze Hour hasn’t been critical journalism since Robert McNeil.
Great pieces on the arts and personal stories, politics not so much
Even with suffering from AIIDS I know that. . .
PBS = Public Bullshit Station
NPR = National Pentagon/Propaganda Radio
Nothing public about PBS
More apt would be Putrid Bullshit Station.
But you got NPR exactly right.
Duane
Have you ever visited the site NPR Check?
It hasn’t been active for quite a while, but for several years Matthew Murray documented the corporate/right wing move of NPR.
His analysis was very insightful.
I’m sure NPR knew about the site and they must have just hated Murray .
About the time NPR Check ended, NPR quit allowing all public comments on their site because too many people like Murray were criticizing them.
SDP, I had not heard of that site.
A few years ago, PBS accepted funding from a group of very wealthy rightwingers to run a two-part series about the benefits of privatizing schools and encouraging for-profit operators. I was appalled. NPE organized a letter writing campaign to give me time to rebut the program. The program got two hours. I got a 10-minute interview on Channel 13 in NYC. I lambasted PBS for allowing rightwingers to buy time for such a biased program. I have never been invited back.
I can’t remember the name of the show. It was based on a book by a CATO libertarian.
This was a follow up to a scandal exposed by David Sirota, who wrote about PBS accepting a very large gift from billionaire John Arnold to run a program on “The Pension Crisis.” John Arnold has two big issues: one is charter schools. The other is his hatred for public pensions. PBS returned his gift.
Due to the growing corporate dependence, PBS and NPR seem to have one basic reporting philosophy. Don’t piss anyone off. I used to watch the Newshour daily until Woodruff took over. The McNeal Lehrer combo at least asked questions that were stimulating intellectually. Wasn’t surprised by Woodruff’s silence because her questions are typically inane until she wants to appear “fair” and grills a democrat. I just wish Capeheart would challenge Brooks in a meaningful way.
PBS and NPR seem to have one basic reporting philosophy. Don’t piss anyone off”
Well, I guess they violated that tenet in this case, eh?
When they decide to piss people off. They do it on a grand scale.
When you are trying not to piss people off, it’s a good idea not to piss on them.
PBS Piss Broadcasting Service
Don’t know. I suppose she places a premium on politesse. Back to Brooks: it would have been so easy to say “Alex Jones.” That theatre of cruelty impresario deserves an entire coal barge.
Yes, but teacher unions are so much worse than Alex Jones, Donald Trump or even Adolf Hitler combined.
Oops. I forgot to include Joseph Stalin and Mao.
Oh. And Mussolini, and Pinochet and Putin and Kim and Jeffrey Epstein.
Teacher unions are worse than all of them together.
And David Brooks too.
Even worse than him, if you can believe that.
It’s the American right wing/Taliban’s talking point- “unions shut down schools.” Dr. Phil had the same theme in a recent show. Conservative men don’t want women to have jobs that make them financially secure.
They have always felt threatened by strong, smart independent women.
And it’s no accident that they attack the unions because that is the one organization that stands in the way of “putting women back in their place”.
Women who vote GOP lack the drive for self-preservation (or, they are stupid).
It’s a common conservative theme, from the Supreme Court to the governors to the male hierarchy of the Catholic church, to put women back in their place.
And it precisely why they oppose abortion because forcing a woman to carry a child to germ is the easiest way to ensure that a woman stays in her place.
To term, not to germ.
Ha ha ha
But germ works too.
GOP message for Women
To carry child to term
The goal of GOP
To carry child to germ
Is what they want for thee
GOP Message to Women (2)
Barefoot and pregnant
The ultimate goal
The goal of Repugnant
Control of your soul
It’s interesting that teachers have become the punching bags of all the most incompetent clowns in our country.
Of the clowns who are just one step up from sea urchins on the evolutionary scale.
I think you got the positions reversed. Sea urchins at least have an important function in the food chain.
You are right.
That’s two times in stand corrected.
Thanks for standing up for us, Diane.
Arthur, I was outraged that Brooks said what he did and went uncorrected. This rightwing trope about the teachers’ Union is vicious. They hate all unions. I remember asking Al Shanker what he thought about Woody Allen’s “Sleeper.” Someone says the world was destroyed when “a man named Albert Shanker got hold of a nuclear weapon.” Shanker said, “For the first time in history, teachers have power due to the union, and some people think that’s the end of the world.”
Sleeper was hilarious.
I thought it was Woody’s best movie.
I read your posts daily, Diane, but rarely comment. We watch OPB and the Newshour and have watched Shields and Brooks and now Brooks and Capehart over the years. But I was outraged with what David Brooks said on Friday night. I thought it was cheap shot at the end of the show where no one had time to counter his assertion. I thought this was an uninformed and insulting assertion made without foundation. Of all the crazy people, insurrectionists, and liars on the far right to whom he could have chosen to hand over a metaphorical lump of coal, he chooses teachers. Bad form, David. I have lost a significant measure of respect for you with that crummy comment.
“…what David Brooks said on Friday night. I thought it was cheap shot at the end of the show where no one had time to counter his assertion.”
Interesting that it was at the end. Could that be why Judy Woodruff didn’t respond? Running out of time? Another reporter should ask her that, PLUS, what HER opinion is about teachers’ unions.
That’s only an excuse if it’s live.
Is it a live broadcast?
If not, they could have deleted it if they actually thought it required a response
Asking Woodruff in a later broadcast or even having Weingsrten respond after is less than adequate because at that point the damage has already been done.
It is live.
But I’d guess they still had a transcript of what he was going to say ahead of time. How else would they know how to fit it all in?
Also, as Diane pointed out above, no one forced Woodruff to sit silently while Brooks spewed his nonsense. She could have interrupted him at any time and simply said,”well, we’ll have to discuss that another time when we have a teachers union rep to reply”
I don’t think she gets off so easy.
She’s supposed to be a seasoned news anchor and she acted more like a newbie.
But I’d bet she knew exactly what he planned to say.
These things are all choreographed to the nth degree.
Yes, it was their traditional few minutes at end of Xmas Eve broadcast where the dueling commentators are asked, as stocking-stuffers, whose they would put something nice into, and whose they’d give a lump of coal. Format allows no time for disagreement or commentary on the choices by host or opposite number.
If Judy Woodruff had a guest who said that the 2020 election was stolen, she would have stepped in.
Thank you for commenting, Carolyn.
The national media has remained profoundly and intentionally ignorant of teaching and teachers. When I heard Brooks make this statement I was extremely disappointed. There are many times I disagree with him, but I have always considered him thoughtful. His comments weren’t the only disappointment. The fact that Woodward and Capeheart did not challenge Brook’s assertion revealed the ongoing blatant disregard the press, in general, has concerning actual conditions within the schools. It has been nothing short of laziness and malpractice in regard to informing themselves, or worse, the general public. They seem to have little comprehension that less than half of public school teachers in America are members of a union or that 28 states are “right to work” and have ostensibly neutered union collective bargaining. Nary a word is expelled about the ongoing effort to silence teachers through the current “accountability efforts” driven by the current testing regime. Too many in the national press are products of eastern elite universities often fed by independent schools who have little to no connection with the public schools. The national press, not just conservative pundits, has fallen short in their obligation to accurately report on the institutions they cover.
When COVID struck, I was in my second year teaching WITHOUT a union on one of our Indian Nations. The school and tribal administrations closed the schools, with support from a majority of parents.
When I retired at the end of that school year, I moved back to the neighboring ANTI-union state where I had previously taught for 10 years. THAT school district, with 9 public schools, was also NON-unionized. Strange thing– that district had closed their schools, too, as had most in the state.
Thanks to David Brooks, I now realize those damn unions are able to work in secret across state lines and take away our rights and our freedoms. They are a clear and present danger to our very existence! But there is one person who can save us! I saw his picture on a card passed among Patriots last week!
Is it the same pseudo Patriots “passing the cards”, who tried to overthrow American democracy on Jan. 6?
Stewart Rhodes’ wife and son, people who know him best, have given their public opinion about men like him.
No, even worse than that. I was referring to the masses of trumperzombies throughout the country who still worship him.
rhodes is the living definition of toxic masculinity; his (ex?) wife the definition of courage.
David Brooks is impaired. He is missing the part of the brain that connects observations and thought. Even when he makes the correct observation, he expresses the wrong conclusion. How he’s made a career of this escapes me.
I would like to say a word on behalf of Judy Woodruff. I have watched her for years building trust with the public figures she interviews with her Southern courtesy only to surprise them when she takes exception to some of their blatant lies. Yes, she should have responded with a promise to get the union response, but let’s not bash her entire career.
“Impaired”, does that definition include deliberate gaslighting in service to colonialism?
Brooks invokes warm nostalgia for the period of the social
gospel with none of the actual substance.
I respect Judy Woodruff. I just wish she had corrected Brooks.
How he’s made a career of this escapes me.
He has made a career of being mostly banal and wrong, of demonstrating in print what passes for thinking among nonthinkers.
My theory is that he had an ice pick lobotomy when he was young
That would explain why He is missing the part of the brain that connects observations and thought”
Would also explain the zombie look he has about him.
You are so right. With a pandemic killing millions around the world, it would have been foolhardy to ignore the threat to teachers, children, and families. Schools followed health protocols based on the scientific knowledge at the time before vaccines were available. Keeping children and teachers alive was the top priority. It’s easy for a journalist who did not have to enter a classroom to forget the panic at the time.
Carol, exactly right.
YES!!!! Well said, Ms. Kocivar!
No one alive in America had ever faced a true pandemic before. We, collectively, didn’t know how to proceed. Add to this a the fact that a President and many gubernatorial num-nuts thought it practical to allow a million people to die for political purposes and you have what we are facing today. To lay this at the feet of teachers who had almost no input on “strategies” to attack this challenge is beyond callous.
Your latter point is worth repeating:
Teachers had little or no control over whehter schools stayed open.. Those decisions were normally made by politicians , often completely without input from the people in the affected communities.
And despite the insinuation of folks like Brooks, in lots of places schools largely stayed open, often despite rampant viral infection in the surrounding communities.
The idea that teachers or their unions kept schools shuttered on some grand , national scale is just a lie.
My last semester as a principal, middle school, occurred during the initial shut down in the spring of 2020. Although I was painfully aware of the district’s unwillingness to engage teachers in policy, it became obvious as my teachers began experimenting, quite successfully I might add, with ways to reach all of their students. All staff at my school agreed that the first priority at the time was to care for the emotional and social well being of our students as they were suddenly isolated from their social networks. We even pulled off a virtual graduation with over 95% student and family participation! In my principal zoom calls however, we were simply given orders. No discussions about what was working on the ground. David Brooks simply displayed our current reality in public education: The general public knows nothing about schooling and the education establishment has little interest in enlightening them.
And it’s also worth pointing out that many of these clowns lie Brooks, Emily Oster and a few folks on this blog were suggesting that teachers should go back to the classroom BEFORE a vaccine had been made available to them and at a time when there was still much uncertainty about spread of the virus in schools and communities at large.
And after schools reopened, some of these same folks were also poo-pooing the mask mandates for schools.
Many have also conveniently forgotten that teachers died…
More than 400 teachers died of COVID.
It’s actually kind of hilarious.
Teachers are basically told what to do (even told when they can use the restroom) by politicians and school administrators and yet when it comes to the decision about whether schools should remain open or be closed, we are somehow supposed to buy the fairy tale that teachers and their unions were the “deciders”.
The whole idea is just absurd.
I’d really like to see the teachers unions sue the pants off that bastard, Brooks because he almost certainly knows his claim is a lie.
David Brooks. He of very little brain.
A lot of people must think this cute, being the Pooh Bear of journalism.
Saying “David Brooks is wrong” is like saying “Someone is wrong on the internet”
It goes without saying and it’s pretty much a waste of time worrying about it.
The shocking thing is how many people gleefully became Vichy collaborators. I remember, in particular, one very high-profile EduPundit who had made a career out of slamming Summative testing and promoting Formative testing (in workshops, products, speaking fees, etc.) who suddenly became Mr. Common Core, all about the “higher standards” and the tests based on them. A complete sell-out. Trashed his own work over decades for a little taste of that river of green $$$ running from Redmond.
Bob, name him.
Don’t know whether you’ve seen the recent research on age groups and transmissiblity … Maybe Brooks should have a read. https://twitter.com/DrEricDing/status/1607293697212792832
Just a two word reply “Emily Oster”
Motivated Reasoning: Emily Oster’s COVID Narratives and the Attack on Public Education
Abigail Cartus, Ph.D, MPH
Justin Feldman, Sc.D, MPH
Economists should not be allowed anywhere near public health.
From the piece linked to above
“The bitter struggle over COVID in schools, conducted with the rhetoric of “choice,” opened up space for an alliance between affluent white liberal parents and a right-wing propaganda infrastructure devoted to destroying unions and public schools. For instance, John Arnold, the former Enron executive behind the eponymous Arnold Ventures (which funds Oster), has used the pandemic to attack teacher’s unions and further his goal of dismantling public pension funding, much of which is allocated to unionized public school teachers. The pandemic also provided an opportunity to increase charter school usage at the expense of public school enrollment. It gave plutocrats like the Waltons yet another chance to attack teachers’ unions by painting their demands for safer working conditions as irrational. By advocating reopening in a seminar at Bellwether Education Partners (another Walton grantee) during a period when the Chicago Teachers Union was campaigning for stronger COVID rules, Oster helped the Waltons do precisely that.”
Under the Trump and Biden administrations alike, the architects of the U.S. pandemic response have failed all parents and children. (To say nothing of society at large.) They failed to prioritize closing non-essential businesses to make it safer to open schools, and they failed to provide schools with resources to ensure a minimum level of public health measures. Interestingly, neither Oster nor the inchoate “school reopener” movement that coalesced around her work ever called on the federal government to ensure a higher level of safety by, say, appropriating more money for universal in-school testing.
Nowadays, school reopening advocates repeatedly insist their conclusions have been vindicated, writing articles with titles like “We Opened Schools and… It was Fine” in The Atlantic. Their declarations of victory ignore a growing body of research that has found schools contribute substantially to community coronavirus transmission, especially in the absence of adequate mitigation. Child vaccination rates also remain abysmally low, with just over a quarter of children ages 5 to 11 fully vaccinated. More than 7,000 people have died of COVID in the U.S. every single week since September 2021: the tragic but predictable outcome of adherence to the warped logic of individual choice in a crisis that is, fundamentally, collective.
As of this writing, what remained of public health measures has largely been abandoned in the wake of the White House’s rhetorical pivot to a “new normal” (and their failure to secure additional COVID funding). Residual fights over masking and vaccine mandates persist; Emily Oster continues to apply her individualized cost-benefit analysis framework to express skepticism of both. COVID is still flourishing, and new variants threaten future surges. Yet the pro-charter and anti-union corporate interests with which Oster and her work are aligned have reason to rejoice. They have succeeded in marshaling data and deeply ingrained cultural attachments to individual choice in service of deregulatory ideology, to everyone’s detriment. They have succeeded in exploiting the politics of schools and education to challenge unions and other impediments to profit. And, along with the rest of the ownership class, they have largely succeeded in normalizing mass death, foreclosing better futures.”
It was clear from the start that motivated reasoning was behind Oster’s conclusions. I even mentioned said that in a comment in October 2020. Ha ha ha
Here’s what Oster claimed on May 4, 2020 (just a few months after the pandemic began) when the data on how the virus spread were very limited (to put it mildly)
“In practice it seems that infection among kids is simply very unlikely. It’s not that they are infected and don’t know it, it seems like they are just not infected very often. And when they are, it may be that the mild symptoms limit their viral spreading (like with the kid in the French example). ”
// EndOster quote
She actually used an example involving a single child (!!) in early May, 2020 to bolster her argument that kids were not likely to spread the virus. How very “scientific” of her (NOT!!)
“There isn’t a ton of research on this yet, but where we have it, it again downplays the role of children. In one case, very early in the epidemic, researchers identified a set of cases in the French Alps (all linked to one set of travelers) and the cases included one kid. During the infected period, this kid visited three different schools (it is completely unclear to me why) and had 112 school contacts. None of these contacts were infected.
Obviously this is a single example, but it is worth noting that in the case of adults we have a number of examples (i.e. the Biogen conference in Boston, some family gatherings in Chicago, one epic party in Westport, CT) where one infected adult spread the virus very widely.”
https://emilyoster.substack.com/p/can-kids-transmit-the-virus
// End Oster quotes
Not incidentally, it was also clear very early on that Emily Oster had (and I would guess, still has) no clue how science works.
One of the most important parts of any scientific study is estimating the uncertainty of the results and reporting said estimate whenever one quotes results (eg, COVID test positivity”)
“bare” results without attached uncertainty are all but meaningless. And quoting such bare results without that are far more precise than the uncertainty allows is completely vacuous.
Oster gets an F on the uncertainty count. I seriously doubt she even knows what uncertainty is (of the scientific or ordinary kind). She herself seems certain about everything.
I was appalled by David Brooks comment about coal for teachers unions. For multiple reasons teachers have been bearing the burden of Covid. Hmmm, seems like David was allowed to do his commentating virtually to keep him safe during covid.
What a careless statement.
David Brooks has been an overrated columnist for way too long. I can never understand what his appeal is to anyone. He’s the epitome of privilege and he takes himself way too seriously. I would not expect him to understand or be supportive of what Randi Weinberg really has done to help the schools during the pandemic and following. In his own subtle way he’s parroting the MAGA talking point that she is responsible for everything bad in this country. More fodder for the right wing project of getting rid of public education. Despicable, really.
Marleen, agreed.
Do Judy and David not know more than 1500 teachers died due to Covid? How many reporters died?
David Brooks attended a Radnor High School, a public school in the a wealthy suburb of Philadelphia. The teachers and staff have a union contract through 2023. If I were a Radnor teacher I would find Brooks’ ridiculous accusation appalling. Well, I find them appalling anyway.
I am still angry at the teachers union and the school board for shutting down our schools in Ann Arbor, Mi during covid while the Saline schools five miles away stayed open. The Saline school board listened to the community, had a balanced dialogue and kept their schools open. The kids in Saline did great with no covid deaths or serious events. In Ann Arbor the community was shut out and told the Board and teachers were closing schools to keep us safe. They acted like we needed their protection and treated us like children and the outcome for all of us was catastrophic. The online classes were horrible, the kids fell behind academically and many suffered severe mental health problems. It was a nightmare and yet the teachers wanted bonuses and to be treated like heroes. Many schools in surrounding districts stayed open successfully but Ann Arbor shut down for almost two years. I had two high schoolers go through that and it was heartbreaking. I will never forgive or forget what the AA teachers union CHOSE to do despite many other districts nearby remaining safely and successfully open. They were advised that kids were better off and safer in school and they listened unlike Ann Arbor.
This article is old now, but I’m writing because I believe I’m watching a history re-write in progress. Teacher’s unions DID play a roll in keeping schools closed longer than necessary, which ultimately harmed our children.
For years now, I‘ve watched, read and listened to teachers union reps. as they clung to every exaggerated study or scientific claim about the risks of unvaccinated children, long-COVID and maskless children. Almost none it ever came true.
On the whole, teachers unions did a good job of listening to their teachers and voicing their concerns, but many well meaning folks said and did things during our pandemic that ultimately made little difference with regard to public health and stoked fear in the process.
Some teachers unions served their members so well that it distracted people from the harm we were doing to tens of millions of children. That happened! I was there.