In Democrat cities across America, the word is out: it's time for masks to go...except on children.  Teachers' unions are adamant that it's just better for those kids to keep hiding their faces.  It's a mystery to me why this is, but it's clear that these people should not be allowed in classrooms because they must really dislike children.

In über-leftist Seattle, the teachers' union wants to keep kids masked for the remainder of the school year:

A Seattle teachers union is pushing for keeping the district's school mask mandate in place until May, despite the state and county no longer requiring masks, arguing that the forced masking ensures a sense of "safety and normalcy."

Seattle Education Association President Jennifer Matter told NPR-affiliate KUOW that the mask mandate should remain until at least May 1, two weeks after students return from spring break, saying there "should be no rush to lift the mask mandate."

"We have people who are immunocompromised, we have pregnant educators, we have educators who have children of their own that are under 5 years of age that cannot be vaccinated," she said.

"Safety and normalcy" for whom? you may well ask.

Image: Students in masks by freepik.

In Chicago, the school district is ditching masks but, again, the teachers' union is pushing back:

On Monday, Chicago Public Schools (CPS) announced it will be making masks optional for employees and students at schools and on school buses starting March 14th, but the Chicago Teachers Union is not pleased with the decision.

The school district noted that it's still encouraging students and adults to wear masks, and will keep carrying out its contact tracing methods and on-site COVID-19 testing.

[snip]

The teachers union said Monday it "will immediately be filing an unfair labor practice charge against the district in response, and requesting that CPS bargain over this decision." Compulsory masking is one of the parts of the COVID-19 deal the teachers union made with CPS in January after a disagreement resulted in five days of canceled classes for students.

(As an aside, in New York City, the only kids who must still wear masks are children under five, the ones least able to cope psychologically with face coverings.  However, this mandate, at least, seems to be purely from NYC mayor Eric Adams, rather than the teachers' unions.)

As you contemplate the unions' adamant stand about masks on students, consider that children almost invariably experience COVID as a mild cold ("data collected by the American Academy of Pediatrics shows that just 0.1% to 1.5% of child COVID cases resulted in hospitalization and 0.00% to 0.01% resulted in deaths") and they're unlikely to infect others.  Consider, too, that children by nature hate having their faces covered, don't detect emotions well from covered faces, have speech delays, get their masks filthy, and are more likely than adults to engage in activities requiring lots of oxygen (it's called playing).  Even NPR admits they can interfere with normal child development.

Given all that, why are teachers, the people who profess to love our children, so determined to keep students muzzled?  It shouldn't be about COVID.  The message is out that COVID is over and obsessing about Ukraine is in.  Moreover, to the extent teachers' unions are leftist in nature, we can assume their members are highly vaccinated — indeed, 91% of the Chicago school district faculty took the jab.

Perhaps the mask has taken on a totemic significance for them.  Over the last two years, they may have come to feel about masks as Victorian ladies felt about corsets or Tammy Faye felt about fake eyelashes: naked and vulnerable without them.

Teachers are, of course, welcome to feel this way about masks.  What they're not welcome to do is subject kids to the true torture of being muzzled all the time, living in fear (exacerbated by the sense of low oxygen), and unable to get a handle on the emotional temperature of those around them — and all for nothing.  If teachers are so paranoid about seeing their students' faces, they shouldn't be teaching.  It's time for them to go...far, far from the classroom.