A ten-year-old who begged his school board to end the mask mandate for students appeared on Tucker Carlson Tuesday night to explain his position on face coverings.
John, a student who currently attends a school in Martin County, Florida, went viral on social media after a video showed him begging his school board to stop forcing students to wear masks. He told the school board while he loves school, his teachers all “seem really stressed” and yell at the children when they pull their masks down to drink water.
His mask “makes it hard to breathe,” John told the school board. “I can’t catch my breath and that makes me feel claustrophobic and anxious. It’s really stressful … I had a hard time focusing with the mask on.”
He said that when he ran into his teacher outside of school, she didn’t even recognize him because she had never seen his face. (RELATED: DeSantis: ‘Kids Do Not Need To Be Wearing These Masks’ For Fall School Semester)
“All this seems unfair and it doesn’t make sense,” John said. “I miss seeing people’s face. I miss the way things used to be. I am scared we will never go back to normal.”
John told Carlson that wearing a mask at school “builds up stress” and that it’s hard to recognize his peers when all he sees are their eyes. He also said that he doesn’t “see any science behind” being forced to wear a mask and that administrators have failed to tell students why they have to wear masks.
John’s father Mark, who also appeared on Tucker Carlson with his son. He said there is “no objective evidence” supporting why students should have to wear masks.
Carlson played a video of Mark attempting to speak at a recent school board meeting. In the video, someone comes and takes the microphone away from him repeatedly as he’s trying to talk, and Mark said that he was being asked to leave. (RELATED: Education Commissioner In Florida Asks Schools To Make Mask-Wearing Voluntary)
“I was trying to wrap up my comments and they asked me to leave here and told me that I was tresspassing – which I think, from what I’ve heard, means I’m going to be banned from speaking at future school board meetings,” he said. “They don’t like the message. They don’t like the criticism. They don’t like it when someone asks questions and tries to hold them accountable for the safety and wellbeing of 18,000 students and 2,000 staff members.”
Mark pointed out that his school district’s positivity rate is less than 2%, and the entire county had a positivity rate of less than 5% for the month of March.
“Do we have to get to zero?” he asked. “And how long do we have to stay at zero? When does this insanity end?”