They say that we can figure out someone's priorities when we look at their actions. Not just their words but what they actually do. So, here's a remarkable story out of San Diego, where teachers have refused to teach in the public schools. The California schools, the public schools, have been closed for a year. Now, who has done that? It hasn't really been the teachers per se; it's the teachers unions. They're one of the most powerful, if not the most powerful, force on the Left. They have tied the governor and the powers that be in knots. They have flatly refused. So here you have these teachers drawing paychecks, but they won't teach the children of California.
Well, it turns out that a bunch of them are going down to the San Diego Convention Center and providing free in-person instruction to illegals, to migrant children. Now, right here, you can see what I think is a shocking distortion of priorities because the message that is being sent, quite blatantly, and I think perhaps even intentionally, is, "Hey, we don't care about these American kids. The migrants come first. We're going to give them priority. We, the teachers, who are being paid."
Let's think of who's paying these teachers. They're being paid through the property tax system of California. So they're being paid not just by the parents, but they're also being paid by the citizens of California. And yet, thumbing their nose at those citizens, the teachers are saying, "We won't teach your children. We're going to teach the Mexican kids and the Iranian kids, everybody else who sneaks over the border. Their kids are going to take priority over yours."
Now, you know, teaching is thought of as an honorable profession. And yet, this is downright bizarre, and I would say contemptuous behavior by these teachers because one would think that their primary responsibility, I don't think teachers take an oath, but their fiduciary responsibility, their moral responsibility, is to the children in their care. The children that they're being paid to teach. And their view has been, "Oh, no! It's too unsafe; you know COVID...so easily transmitted. We just can't possibly do this without 75 steps being in place to protect us." Well, wait a minute. Are you trying to transmit COVID to all these migrant children? What about all the dangers of COVID in that situation?
Suddenly you begin to see that the COVID thing is a big smokescreen. Basically, all these people and these unions have been extracting bushels of money through the tax system and all the various Biden bailouts and so on. They're taking all this money to do nothing, to do absolutely nothing. The time that they move into action and do something is to provide this in-person instruction to illegals. This is not just the teachers' priority, but it is the priority of the Left. It's the priority of the Democratic Party. Very revealing, the press secretary, Jen Psaki, was asked about this and gave a very odd and interesting response.
"As I understand it, San Diego Public Schools are opening in early April," Psaki stated. "Since students will be back in the classroom, and as I understand it, this is related, part-time, and certainly you know our objective from the White House, opening up five days a week the majority of schools across the country. And they're on spring break right now, and this is related to volunteering or being paid; I'm not even sure, you'd have to ask the local school district during spring break for these migrant kids."
I mean, what a squid-like cloud of obfuscation and diversion.
Let's analyze what Jen Psaki is saying. She's saying, first of all, no big deal. It's not a big deal at all. Why? Because even though the schools have been shut for a year, they're scheduled to open on April 9 or April 12. So that's the first thing.
Number two, the kids are California kids on spring break now anyway. So, the teachers are doing nothing; they've probably got a bunch of free time on their hands. They're being paid. So, why not do a little field trip down to the convention center and teach these migrant kids? What's the big deal about that?
And third, the San Diego kids are going to have instruction. Now admittedly not full-time instruction, only part-time instruction, a lot of school is apparently still going to continue online. But this is all salvaged by Jen Psaki by saying, "it is our objective," so we're not actually doing it. Well, we plan to do it, we aspire to do it, we hope to do it. One fine day we might actually do it, provide full-time five-day-a-week instruction. But it doesn't bother her in the slightest that the teachers, instead of focusing single-mindedly on that, how to open the schools, how to provide that instruction, these guys are sauntering down to teach the illegals.
If this happened in any other country, I can only imagine the scandal. I mean, I'm just trying to envision a group of Pakistani families, pushing their way across the Indian border, and then Indian teachers, who have not been teaching Indian students and they are being paid by Indian taxpayers, say, "You know what, we're going to go down there and teach the Pakistani kids who come across the border. We're going to make a statement. We care more about those kids than we do about our own kids." First of all, these teachers would have to run for their lives, but even if they didn't do that, the parents would make such a political hullabaloo that the government would instantly step in, put a stop to this kind of nonsensical practice. Essentially, the policy would be really simple, India first.
Is it that hard to figure out that a country owes its primary duties to its own citizens and its own children? Well, apparently, that's news to the Biden administration. Perhaps in a desire to take the opposite stance from Trump, their policy seems to be not American children first, but American children last. Not America first, but America last.
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