Actions Speak Louder Than Words

The Democrats' actions over the past two-and-a-half years have shown me who they really are. They are the party that doesn’t care about kids or public education.

As Maya Angelou famously said: “When people show you who they are, believe them.” These days, this advice has been given so often by self-help gurus spewing psychobabble that it’s become a bit of a cliché. But that doesn’t mean it’s not good advice.

The Democrats have shown me who they really are. They are the party that doesn’t care about kids or public education. They can hem and haw and say “oh that’s not true” but, to use another cliché, actions speak louder than words. And their actions have spoken. They have shown me who they are. And I believe them.

The New York Times reported on the recently released “Nation’s Report Card” about the state of education with the headline: “The Pandemic Erased Two Decades of Progress in Math and Reading.” Black and brown children, already at significant disadvantage in educational attainment, were impacted the most, increasing overall inequality. Because, this is not just about declining test scores. Kids who don’t learn to read and do math in grade school are at far greater risk of not graduating from high school, increasing the likelihood that they will live their whole lives in poverty.

But it wasn’t the pandemic that erased two decades of progress with the steepest drop in test scores in over 30 years, as The New York Times claims. It was school closures that did it.

And it was Democrats who caused this devastating generational harm. It was Democrats who refused to open public schools for a year - a year-and-a-half in VERY Democratic states like California. And it was Democrats who then inflicted another year of onerously restricted school, with frequent closures due to unnecessary quarantines, on these same kids who had already missed over a year of their education.

The more Democratic the state or city, the longer the schools were shuttered and the more the politicians, public health bureaucrats and educational leaders insisted: “Nah, there’s no such thing as learning loss. The kids are fine. They’re resilient!”

When Cecily Myart-Cruz, the head of United Teachers Los Angeles, said “It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience,” it came across as tone deaf and indifferent to the lifetime of adverse impacts that these inequitable school closures would cause. (Because remember, private schools were largely opened by fall 2021).

And when former President of the San Francisco School Board, Gabriela López said, “They are learning more about their families and their culture, spending more time with each other. They’re just having different learning experiences than the ones we currently measure,” it came across as so obtuse that it was worthy of recalling her from her elected post. And then she was recalled, at least in part because of saying insanely indifferent things like this.

NPR reporter Anya Kamenetz is the author of The Stolen Year, a heartbreakingly empathetic and beautifully drawn account of what actually happened to kids, real kids, during the years that were stolen from them. She argues effectively that this year wasn’t lost, it was stolen. But falls short of identifying the thief. Why?

In the book, Kamenetz says: “The danger that children would be harmed by prolonged school closures in 2020 was clear from the beginning.”

If it was so obvious doesn’t that make the thieving more egregious and doesn’t that make it more important to identify the culprits, and then to hold said culprits accountable? At the very least, for the reason that these culprits should not be permitted to make decisions affecting our kids going forward after having proven themselves so incapable of making a decision that was so “obvious.” There is no other word for that but incompetence. And grossly incompetent people should not get to keep their jobs.

Kamenetz also wrote a piece last week in The Washington Post entitled “The GOP Wants to be the Education Party. Democrats Have to Fight Back.” I’ll adjust the headline. “The GOP IS the Education Party. The Democrats Have a Long Way to Go if They Want to Claim This Mantle.” Because not only did the Democrats keep the schools closed, they smeared anyone who dared to challenge this cruel policy.

Kamenetz grants that apologies are due on this point:

There’s also a vocal minority of “open schools” parents, Democrats and former Democrats, who sorely want it acknowledged that they were right all along. They deserve that — and an apology from those who labeled their position racist.

I appreciate this but I don’t see it happening. And without apologies there can be no forgiveness.

She goes on:

Republicans might have claimed the headlines on education, but in the long term, Democrats have the right priorities.

Really? Nothing in their actions would suggest that this is the case. Even after schools opened in fall 2021, kids in blue cities were forced to each lunch outside even in the rain and freezing cold weather. They were also forcibly masked and subjected to tyrannical rules that interfered with learning, and many were barred from sports because they were not vaccinated.

On September 6, Jill Filipovic wrote the following in an opinion piece for CNN:

Democrats need to respond with their own clear message: That education is a right, and is among one of the most formative and valuable tools we give our children.

This isn’t a messaging problem. This is an action problem. For a year-and-a-half Democrats signaled in every way possible that education is not a right, and that it is not a valuable tool. Many of the Democrats sending this signal – California Governor Gavin Newsom, for instance – kept the public schools closed while sending their own children to private school! So, I guess that these entitled elitists think it’s a right for those who can afford fancy academies but not for those who can’t?

And it’s not over for kids in Democratic strongholds. Unvaccinated kids in New York City public schools still can’t participate in sports or after-school activities. Toddlers in Headstart programs continue to be muzzled with masks, just when they are learning to talk.

By contrast, in June 2020, Florida Governor Ron DeSantis announced that schools would open in the Fall. By August 31, 2020, public schools in Florida were required to open. He said:

"We spent months saying that there were certain things that were essential -- that included fast food restaurants, it included Walmart, Home Depot. If fast food and Walmart and Home Depot [are] essential, then educating our kids is absolutely essential.”

I agree.

I was a progressive Democrat for my entire voting life, just like Kamenetz and Filipovic, I imagine. I’m not anymore. I’m not a Republican either. But, as Maya Angelou said: “When people show you who they are, believe them.”

I am not so gullible and blinded with loyalty and party worship that I can’t see what is right in front of my face. Thus, there is no amount of burnishing their message before the November election that will convince me the Democrats care about other people’s kids or about public schools.

I believe Democrats. They’ve shown me who they are.