New York Post columnist Miranda Devine said Wednesday that the nation’s teachers need to get back to work and put the needs of children ahead of their perceived fears.
“These teachers are the only — it is the only line of work where you can sit at home and not go to work and still get paid,” Devine told Fox News’s “Tucker Carlson Tonight.”
“It is pathological. That video you showed of those people prancing around, that’s sociopathic to be doing that when children are committing suicide because they can’t go to school,” she said in reference to a video produced by the Chicago Teachers Union that shows teachers dressed in leotards doing interpretive dance routines. (RELATED: Unions Move The Goalposts On School Reopenings To The Detriment Of Children)
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) and National Education Association (NEA) are still balking at teachers returning to the classroom even after the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released a study Tuesday that supports the safety of in-person instruction.
“They are committing suicide,” Devine said of school children succumbing to depression during the pandemic lockdowns. “They are in all sorts of trouble and … children do not pass on the virus to their teachers. In fact, they get less infected than their parents; they are not a risk.”
Devine suggested that President Joe Biden “has this unique ability to connect with the teacher unions because he is teacher union guy and he has the political capital at the moment because he’s not Donald Trump. He just won an election.”
She encouraged Biden to speak to the teachers unions and to use his “moral authority from his union background” to stop the “scaremongering.” Devine insisted the teachers will not “get sick from their students” and they need to “go back to work.”
“To be pretending that you are not going to go back to work until all the children are vaccinated as well as all the teachers is just a fraud because we know the vaccine is not approved yet for children and children are not at risk.”
President Joe Biden signs an executive order on Jan. 21. (Alex Wong/Getty Images)
She suggested that if they still refuse to resume their employment, teachers should “quit” and let others do the job for them.
The AFT and NEA both endorsed Biden for president during his 2020 presidential campaign and had cheered his executive order on school reopenings. Following his inauguration, Biden issued an executive order that directed the Department of Education on “evidence-based guidance” to allow schools to reopen.