During Saturday’s broadcast of FNC’s “Justice,” Sen. Rand Paul (R-KY) warned of the consequences of keeping schools closed for prolonged periods around the country, saying such policies lacked “scientific evidence” of being effective.
The Kentucky Republican pointed to studies abroad that back up a claim COVID-19 does not spread among school children.
“You know, I think, immeasurable damage. I’ve been saying to Dr. Fauci and the so-called government experts since May of last year that none of the studies indicate that the kids are good spreaders of this disease, the kids don’t get very sick, really, they don’t tend to transmit the disease either. We have studies now in a dozen different European countries. We have studies of private schools across the United States that haven’t missed a beat and have been in session without any major surge, without significant amount of teachers getting sick. There’s really no scientific evidence towards keeping it closed, but the unions are now saying, oh, well, we need to pass the Green New Deal, and we need to have gender equity or something, you know, that has nothing to do with teaching the kids, and I’m wondering when is the union going to care about actually teaching our kids?”
Paul said as long as schools remained closed, it would continue to wreak havoc on cultural and societal divides.
“The thing is, is there’s already talk of increased numbers of suicide, isolation, but most parents just aren’t capable of teaching. Some are extraordinary teachers,” he said. “But a lot of parents aren’t. They’re either working, or maybe they lack the education to be good teachers at home. And really, being at home without any instruction or without any professional instruction for a lot of kids is a disaster. It is putting them nearly a year behind in grade. Some of them, when they’re going back into school, are doing very poorly on testing and showing that they’ve already lost ground.
“When you look at studies between rich and poor, poor kids start out at a disadvantage,” Paul added. “You know, the rich kids with more educated parents start out at a better level, and they tend to narrow that gap as they go to school over September through May, then it widens again in the summer. But now everything is like the summer, and so economic disparity is also leading to educational disparity.”
Follow Jeff Poor on Twitter @jeff_poor
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