L.A. Teachers Union Prez Spouts Colossal Ignorance

CLAY: I don’t want the failures of the teachers unions to completely escape when it comes to, I think, really, they being (laughing) basically the worst people on the planet as it pertains to covid lockdowns, which is really saying something. And in particular, this woman, Myart-Cruz, who is the head of the L.A. Teachers Union has one of the most ridiculous quotes I’ve ever seen associated with the covid lockdowns and the facts that kids were out of school in L.A. from March mostly all through last year.

If you’re a public school kid, here’s what she said about the kids — 600,000, by the way, kids in the Los Angeles area — in kindergarten through 12th grade. “Our kids didn’t lose anything. It’s OK that our babies may not have learned all their times tables. They learned resilience. They learned survival. They learned critical-thinking skills. They know the difference between a ‘riot’ and a ‘protest.’ They know the words ‘insurrection’ and ‘coup.'”

That is a quote. She even went further and said “that ‘learning loss’ is a fake crisis” used to manipulate people.” Buck, when you hear, “They know the difference between a ‘riot’ and a ‘protest.’ They know the words ‘insurrection’ and ‘coup,'” we know the data. The data reflects the poorest kids and the least advantaged kids by far the biggest loser as it pertained to education, their educational skills that they will not have for the rest of their lives. The L.A. Teachers Union, if it had any soul, if it had any basis in intelligent thought whatsoever, would kick this woman to the curb as soon as they saw these quotes.

BUCK: Completely unacceptable, and yet she represents them perfectly. She is what the teachers unions have become, which are self-serving commie indoctrination centers. This is what teachers unions across America have devolved into. We see this from the fact that while there were people showing up — frontline workers all over America — teachers figured, “Too dangerous for us to have to be in school with kids,” even though kids as we know very unlikely to get it, and unlikely to spread it, at least at that time.

This is, remember, pre-Delta variant. And the Delta variant is not substantially more dangerous to kits despite some of the reporting on that six weeks ago. It is more transmissible, more easily transmissible among people. But when she says things like, “They know the difference between … They know the words ‘insurrection’ and ‘coup,'” she’s saying the quiet part out loud.

(translated) “Your kids in the public school system in Los Angeles may not be able to spell or do their multiplication tables, but darn it, they know how to get out there and chant, ‘Whose streets? Our streets!’ They know how to put up the black square of BLM on their Instagram accounts. They know that they’re supposed to hate people who voted for Donald Trump, even though they’re too young to vote and don’t know anything about politics.”

Clay, this is in L.A., but this is a teachers union head who is speaking for the public school system writ large across most of blue state America. This is how they think. This is how they operate.

CLAY: What about the difference between a riot and a protest? Do you really think the kids know the difference between a riot and a protest? They may know the difference between a riot and protest as pertains to CNN saying it’s a mostly peaceful protest.

BUCK: Yes. I think they have been taught what the Democrat version of it is, which is a protest is anything that Democrats want to call it, when it involves a large group of people doing something —

CLAY: Yeah.

BUCK: — and a riot is anything that involves people who says the word patriot, freedom or America too many times and is not waving a BLM flag. I think they probably have been taught that false separation.

CLAY: Yeah, what’s so frustrating, too, about many of those comments from this L.A. Teachers Union head is she specifically references the “times tables.” First of all, I think it’s timetables, right, not times tables. I may not be an expert on that, but I think that she misspoke there, which you would hope that somebody would get something basic like that right. But math is, to me, the essence of something that should not be political and that everyone has to learn in order to have a modicum of ability in the classroom. We can argue —

BUCK: Well, you’re lucky that Ms. Myart-Cruz, Clay, isn’t here to tell you how racist that is.

CLAY: (laughing) Yeah, I don’t even know what race Miss Myart-Cruz is to be honest. But I will say this: If you are arguing that these kids have not been tremendously disadvantaged and failed by all adults — particularly the teachers union — then you, my friend, lack basic comprehension of data, which is probably true. And it’s reflective of the fact that you yourself did not learn your math very well.

Because all sorts of nonpartisan entities — McKenzie Group, for example — came out with data showing the massive amount of learning loss that occurred with schools being shut down. And the places that had biggest learning losses were the kids had the most disadvantaged, kids without WiFi at home, kids without parents able to make sure they’re paying attention if there is some remote learning instruction going on.

Kids who don’t have the resources to be able to fall further behind, and that doesn’t even consider all of the lost meals. Buck, I saw the data that came out on the flip side. When we told the kids to go stay home and we shut down playgrounds and we took rims off of the basketball hoops and we took down tennis nets and we filled in skate parks, do you know what happened for kids ages 5 to 11?

The obesity rate in this country skyrocketed! The most important thing anybody out there can do for their health as it pertains to being in as good of shape as possible is to lose weight and eat healthy. That’s something you can control, and yet the obesity rate in this country for kids age 5 to 11 skyrocketed. Overall weight gain for Americans of all different stripes skyrocketed as well, because we gave the worst possible advice. We should have mandated gym memberships instead of masks.

BUCK: It’s hard for even adults, and I can tell you I put on the covid 15. I’m down like 5 of it, I think, maybe.

CLAY: Yeah, I saw you just scarfing down that hamburger. (laughing)

BUCK: Hey! Hey! You settle down.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: That was at a commercial break. That’s sacred.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: But I gotta say, man, if you’re going to tell kids that they have to stay home — all right, they have to stay home, they can’t exercise, they can’t get out there — of course there are going to be health implications for them. Of course, there are going to be things like that that come up.

And, yet, the idea that this woman, going back to what she said about “learning loss…” This is from the article, Clay, from the Los Angeles Times Magazine article. Quote, “She even went so far as to suggest darkly that ‘learning loss’ is a fake crisis marketed by shadowy purveyors of clinical and classroom assessments,” i.e., they want to pretend that kids who did not show up for Zoom at all, which was a huge issue across the country —

CLAY: Yes.

BUCK: — or were sitting there with Zoom and having no interaction with adults, no interaction with their peers, that they didn’t actually do work?

By the way, the testing already shows that what she’s saying is a lie. But see this is the Democrat power apparatus. That’s what the teachers unions are really all about: Jobs programs for adults and pushing commie ideology as far as they possibly can across the country. The Democrat Party’s all in on it.

So the lie about… I mean, what could be more important than to know whether or not this experiment in distance learning was a disaster?

CLAY: Which it was.

BUCK: Of course!

CLAY: Maybe she doesn’t know her “times tables” well enough to be able to look at the data and actually see how much she failed all of the kids she ostensibly is trying to help educate.

BUCK: Let it be known: You mess up your singular and plural and Professor Travis…

CLAY: Am I crazy or should it be timetables?

BUCK: You have kids.

CLAY: Is it timetables or times tables?

BUCK: I haven’t looked at a timetable since people were listening to VHS cassettes or whatever. We had the little tapes.

CLAY: (laughing)

BUCK: So it’s been a long time.