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In a recent roundtable discussion on “Face the Nation”, CBS News Jan Crawford stunned the panel when she opined about the devastating effects COVID-19 policies have placed upon children. “They will be paying for our generation’s decisions the rest of their lives,” she said. This follows former New York Times columnist Nicholas Kristof who wrote, “The blunt fact is that it is Democrats — including those who run the West Coast, from California through Oregon to Washington State — who have presided over one of the worst blows to the education of disadvantaged Americans in history.”
We are now almost two years into the COVID-19 pandemic and some schools around the country are going back to remote learning which had disastrous results before. Missing in these cases is the in-person instruction where a student can interact more easily, and also socialize with friends. That’s a major reason why many areas saw a drastic increase in childhood mental health problems during this crisis.
Some universities, like Princeton and Georgetown, have implemented what I believe are drastic and unscientific COVID policies for this school year. Dr. Marty Makary, a professor at Johns Hopkins, said in early January, “Students are the lowest risk population on planet Earth. Over the last six months, the risk of a person in the broader age group [15-24] dying of Covid or dying with Covid [the CDC does not clearly distinguish], was 0.001%.”
Students do not have much of a voice to challenge the rules brought upon them. It’s a shame because they are the future. What hope are we giving them? We can start by showing some courage and speaking up for the children.
Kevin Landry
Lewiston