Juno News - January 26, 2022


Ontario Teacher： We Have Betrayed Our Children


Episode Stats


Length

16 minutes

Words per minute

198.85146

Word count

3,278

Sentence count

229

Harmful content

Misogyny

1

sentences flagged

Hate speech

2

sentences flagged


Summary

Summaries generated with gmurro/bart-large-finetuned-filtered-spotify-podcast-summ .

Candice Malan talks about the massive trucker convoy headed to Ottawa and the support they are getting from conservative MPs and other supporters of the truckers and their fight for freedom. She also talks about a new piece by an Ontario teacher who writes a powerful piece saying that we have betrayed our children.

Transcript

Transcript generated with Whisper (turbo).
Misogyny classifications generated with MilaNLProc/bert-base-uncased-ear-misogyny .
Hate speech classifications generated with facebook/roberta-hate-speech-dynabench-r4-target .
00:00:00.000 An Ontario teacher writes a powerful column saying that we have betrayed our children
00:00:05.180 and sadly it has fallen on deaf ears. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.
00:00:13.580 Hi everyone, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for tuning in to The Candice Malcolm
00:00:17.840 Show today. Now I'm going to talk about this really powerful sub stack that came out over
00:00:22.520 the weekend, late last week actually, but before we do, just give you a quick update. The big story
00:00:27.060 in the country continues to be the huge trucker convoy heading to Ottawa and the courageous
00:00:33.560 blue-collar warriors who are fighting back and standing up for all of our freedoms. God bless
00:00:39.380 them. We continue to see the legacy media picking up the most negative aspects of the story, trying
00:00:44.460 to paint these people as fringe, trying to say that there's some kind of extremist sort of painting the
00:00:49.460 picture like it could be some kind of a January 6th event or preparing for something like that,
00:00:54.800 or we see them focusing again on the negative like the issues around the GoFundMe page. Regardless,
00:01:01.140 these courageous truckers are persevering and I'll just say the footage is inspiring. It is great to
00:01:07.540 see so many people in this country fighting back and let me just say the estimates of this event are
00:01:12.820 huge. I've heard upwards of half a million people are planning to attend this rally, perhaps up to
00:01:19.840 50,000 truckers heading to Ottawa. So, you know, that might be an overshoot, but still those numbers
00:01:26.380 are profound. Like we're talking about some of the biggest rallies in the history of our country and
00:01:31.860 to me, for someone who has been sort of suffering through the pandemic and feeling at so many times
00:01:38.040 like our country has walked away from our charter. We've turned our back on our ancient freedoms. We've
00:01:43.380 been willing, so willing to sacrifice them in exchange for safety, in exchange for so-called
00:01:48.360 health, public health. That has made me feel distraught at times, but seeing all of these
00:01:53.440 people is truly inspiring and I hope it inspires you as well. So here's just some video footage from
00:01:59.020 the past 24 hours.
00:02:00.360 And that comes from our friend Andy Lee, who is an independent journalist and reporter who has the
00:02:27.440 Twitter handle Hannah Bananas. And another clip here from Mary Oaks, a tremendous independent
00:02:33.340 journalist who has been providing great footage. So here is a video that she recorded.
00:02:57.440 And interestingly, more and more conservative MPs are throwing their support behind these truckers 0.99
00:03:05.980 and showing critical signs of the vaccine mandates, of the failed policy of vaccine mandates. Of course,
00:03:12.200 very interesting, despite the waffling of their party leader. We have a group of MPs who are just
00:03:18.320 flat out saying that they support the truckers. So here is high profile MP Pierre Polyev saying this
00:03:24.420 is pretty funny. The unmasked partier is worried. The guy alone in his truck is spreading COVID,
00:03:29.500 hashtag dust inflation. And of course, we know Justin Trudeau is a massive hypocrite. The rules
00:03:33.420 don't apply to him. And he is punishing blue collar workers. Leslie Lewis, who is a former leadership
00:03:38.600 candidate for the conservatives, wrote this. She says, I'm proud of the truckers. Peaceful protest is
00:03:43.120 a cornerstone of our democracy. The liberal mandates are unscientific, vindictive, mean-spirited,
00:03:47.840 and promote segregation. The people have a moral obligation to oppose unjust laws and mandates.
00:03:54.040 And she quote tweeted, former leader Andrew Scheer, who I read this tweet on the program
00:03:58.360 yesterday, but he writes this. Thank you, truckers. Trudeau is attacking personal liberty
00:04:02.160 and threatening everyone's ability to get groceries because of his overreach on vaccine mandates.
00:04:06.760 He is the biggest threat to freedom in Canada. Absolutely agree with that. Many more conservative
00:04:11.860 MPs are likewise joining in to throw their support behind this movement. Martin Shields writes this.
00:04:17.180 He says, I am in Ottawa awaiting the trucking convoy on its way to the capital. Canadian supply chains
00:04:21.880 are critical and the true to liberal government's mandates and freedom curbing restrictions have
00:04:26.200 gone on too long. It's time to get our freedoms back. Likewise, we have Kevin Way, who says this.
00:04:32.860 I supported our local truck drivers as they hit the road in Saskatoon today. It should have never
00:04:37.000 come to this for them. Safe travels. And I will see you folks in Ottawa. Shannon Stubbs, great big
00:04:42.660 thanks to the organizers and to everyone taking part. Let's make sure we do whatever we can to show
00:04:47.480 our support to the convoy for freedom 2022. Really, really just lots of support. Jeremy
00:04:53.560 Patzer, huge crowds and swift current for the convoy to Ottawa. And he's got some video footage
00:04:58.440 there. Ryan Williams, support the truckers. We need them more than ever. I mean, I could go on and on
00:05:04.880 and on. There are a lot, a lot of MPs throwing their support behind the trucking convoy, which is great
00:05:11.000 to see. And I hope that Aaron O'Toole, the leader of the party, comes around and follows the rest of his
00:05:15.520 party by supporting this convoy and supporting freedom in this country. Okay, I want to talk
00:05:21.020 about this incredible column that was published last Thursday on Barry Weiss's Substack. It was
00:05:25.520 published late last week, written by a woman named Stacey Lance, who describes herself as a proud mother
00:05:30.680 and educator living in Ontario, Canada. It's interesting because I listen to a lot of podcasts
00:05:36.240 and I sometimes get news from the U.S. And I've been hearing about this Substack, this article
00:05:41.120 on Barry Weiss's Substack through a lot of people in the U.S. And when I finally went to click on it
00:05:46.260 and read it, I realized that it was a Canadian teacher, a Canadian telling her story about the
00:05:50.960 Canadian experience. And to me, that shows two things. One, the fact that Americans are talking
00:05:55.740 about the Canadian experience more than I hear Canadians talking about it is really disappointing.
00:06:00.400 And second, the fact that this op-ed, which is a beautiful, well-written piece, I'm going to read
00:06:04.720 much of it today. The fact that rather than publishing this in a Canadian publication,
00:06:10.580 she didn't publish in the National Post. She didn't go to the Globe and Mail. She didn't go
00:06:14.160 to the Toronto Star. Instead, she went to Barry Weiss. Barry Weiss used to work for the New York
00:06:18.540 Times. And then she sort of left out of protest because of how maddeningly woke that publication
00:06:23.020 has become. And her Substack is very popular. Now it's become sort of like an editorial page
00:06:28.080 for the disaffected, usually like left wing or center left or liberal crowd in the U.S.
00:06:34.380 and really attracting a lot of interesting people. But just the very fact that she submitted
00:06:39.240 her op-ed here. Now, I haven't had the chance to speak to her. We've reached out and waiting
00:06:42.720 to hear back. But I wonder, I mean, it's curious as to why she would go to a U.S. publication
00:06:47.960 rather than going in Canada. And to me, it just shows that perhaps there's just no interest
00:06:52.000 in Canada. There's no appetite for this. I don't know if she tried to submit it to other
00:06:55.020 places and got rejected or if she just went straight to Barry Weiss because perhaps that's
00:06:59.060 where she gets her news. But either way, it's telling that the independent voices on the
00:07:03.820 internet, the independent journalists, the independent platforms is what is attracting most of the
00:07:08.560 most interesting journalism in the country. Okay. So a bit more about Stacey Lance. She 0.98
00:07:12.920 is based in Ottawa. She works as a teacher at the Catholic school. She's worked in this
00:07:17.320 Canadian public school system for the past 15 years. She teaches high school and she teaches
00:07:21.820 morals and ethics in high school. So she is perfectly qualified to be talking about these issues.
00:07:27.560 And the piece that she writes here is called, I'm a school teacher. The kids aren't all right.
00:07:32.600 Really, really powerful stuff. And so here we go. Let me just jump right into it.
00:07:38.100 So again, the title is, I'm a public school teacher. The kids aren't all right. The subtitle
00:07:42.200 here says, my students were taught to think of themselves as vectors of disease. This has
00:07:46.980 fundamentally altered their understanding of themselves. So here she goes. I am proud to be
00:07:52.000 a teacher. I've worked in the Canadian public school system for the past 15 years, mostly at the
00:07:55.820 high school level, teaching morals and ethics. I don't claim to be a doctor or an expert in
00:07:59.760 virology. There is a lot I don't know, but I spend my days with our youth and they tell me a lot
00:08:04.560 about their lives. And I want to tell you what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing. Since beginning of
00:08:08.740 the pandemic, when our school went fully remote, it was evident to me that the loss of human
00:08:12.480 connection would be detrimental to our students' development. It also became increasingly clear
00:08:16.880 that the response to the pandemic would have immense consequences for students who are already on
00:08:21.240 the path to long-term disengagement, potentially altering their lives permanently. The data about
00:08:27.000 learning loss and mental health crisis is devastating. Overlooked has been the deep shame young people
00:08:31.660 feel. Our students are taught to think of their schools as hubs for infection and themselves as
00:08:36.240 vectors of the disease. This has fundamentally altered their understanding of themselves. This
00:08:41.040 is, this stuff is so obvious and so true. And yet we rarely hear this point. We rarely hear this
00:08:45.460 perspective. We rarely hear someone so reasonably discussing the, the pros and cons of our approach
00:08:51.000 and, and, and some sort of deeper consequences of these continued lockdowns of, of, of telling kids
00:08:58.380 that they have to follow all of these really obscure rules and, and just the psychological effect of it
00:09:03.940 all. And, and, and again, it's really refreshing to hear this. I will continue from this sub stack.
00:09:08.660 She writes, when we finally got back into the classroom in September, 2020, I was optimistic. Even
00:09:14.500 when we would go remote for weeks, sometimes months, whenever cases would rise, but things never
00:09:19.000 returned to normal. When we were physically in school, it felt like there was no longer life
00:09:23.480 in the building. Maybe it was the masks that made it so that no one wanted to engage in lessons or
00:09:28.480 even talk about how they spent their weekends. It felt cold and soulless. My students weren't allowed
00:09:33.280 to gather in the halls or chat between classes. They still aren't. Sporting events, clubs, and graduation
00:09:38.320 were all canceled. This may sound like small things, but these losses were a huge deal to students.
00:09:43.840 These are rites of passages that cannot be made up. In my classroom, the learning loss is noticeable.
00:09:50.160 My students can't concentrate and they aren't doing the work that I assigned to them. They have way less
00:09:55.660 motivation compared to before the pandemic began. Some of my students chose not to come back at all,
00:10:00.520 either because of fear of the virus or because they are debilitated by social anxiety. And now they
00:10:05.880 have the option to do virtual schooling from home. Again, these are so many points that just need to be
00:10:10.720 made. They need to be discussed. They need to be part of the public discussion. They're so relevant.
00:10:14.680 We are living in a time of immense change, immense progress. And with that progress, I mean,
00:10:20.140 the lives of teenagers today are very different from the lives of teenagers 10 years ago, which are
00:10:24.440 very different from the lives of teenagers 10 years before that. There's just constant change.
00:10:28.240 Everything is new. The introduction of technology, the constant use of social media, the amount of time
00:10:33.180 that children spend on screens and sort of as avatars of themselves is already having a really damaging
00:10:39.560 effect. I mean, read Coddling of the American Mind to sort of understand how the idea of safetyism and
00:10:44.960 protecting children has superseded other things. And because of that, they're not developing
00:10:48.700 in the same rate as previous generations. And then you add on top of that, which was already
00:10:53.460 happening, you know, the trends that they were picking up on that in that book, Jonathan Haidt and
00:10:58.080 Greg Luganov, that, you know, that book was focused on like the 2012 to 2015. I think the book came out
00:11:04.260 around then 2015, 2016. Obviously, that's all pre COVID. And you compound that with the impact
00:11:10.280 of forcing kids to stay at home and making everything virtual and isolated. And even when
00:11:15.340 they're back in school, they can't talk, they can't do normal things. Really, again, profound impact.
00:11:20.300 And we don't really seem to ever be talking about this. Okay, I'm going to continue reading from this
00:11:24.600 subsec because again, I think it is so excellent. So she writes, my older students grade 11 and 12
00:11:30.000 aren't allowed a lunch break and are expected to come to school, go to class for five and a half
00:11:35.000 hours and then go home. Children in ninth and 10th grade have to face the front of the classroom when
00:11:39.240 they eat lunch during a second period class. My students used to be able to eat in the halls of
00:11:42.780 the cafeteria. Now it's forbidden. Younger children are expected to follow the mask off, voices off rule
00:11:48.200 and are made to wear their masks even outside is so absurd where they can only play with kids in
00:11:54.180 their class. Of course, outside of school, kids are allowed to go to restaurants with their families
00:11:58.240 and to each other's houses, making the rules feel punitive and nonsensical. That's how we all feel.
00:12:03.480 But again, for children, it's hard to even make sense of why adults are telling you to follow rules
00:12:08.060 that are inconsistent and don't make sense. I'll continue reading. They are anxious and depressed.
00:12:13.680 Previously outgoing students are now terrified at the prospect of being singled out to stand in front
00:12:17.980 of the class and speak. Many of my students seem to have found comfort behind their masks.
00:12:22.200 They feel exposed when their peers can see their whole face. Around this time of year, we start planning
00:12:26.860 for prom, which is usually held in June. Usually my students would already be chatting constantly
00:12:31.040 about who's asking who, what they're planning on wearing and how excited they are. This year,
00:12:35.640 they barely discussed it at all. When they do tell me about it, they say that they don't want to get
00:12:39.600 their hopes up since they're assuming it will get canceled like it has for the past couple of years.
00:12:43.920 It's the same deal with universities. My students say, if university is going to be like this,
00:12:48.100 then what's the point? I have my own children, a nine-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son who've
00:12:52.020 spent almost a third of their lives in lockdown. They've become so used to cancellations,
00:12:55.980 they don't even feel disappointed anymore. I think all of my students are angry to some degree,
00:13:00.700 but I hear about it most from the kids who are athletes. They are told that if they got the
00:13:04.440 vaccine, everything would go back to normal and they would go back to the rink or the court.
00:13:08.620 Some sports were back for a while, but as of Christmas, because of the recent wave of COVID-19
00:13:11.940 cases, clubs and varsity sports are all canceled once again. A lot of the athletes are missing chances
00:13:16.960 to be seen by coaches and get scholarships. Again, just, it's hard to even wrap your head around
00:13:22.500 how devastating this could be for a child. You get one shot. You get one shot to make it,
00:13:27.160 to get a scholarship, to go to college, to try to play in some kind of a, you know, elite level
00:13:32.220 of your sport. And it's being passed by for these children. They're following the rules. They got
00:13:36.700 vaccinated. They did what they were told, and yet they still rip it away. And you think about how
00:13:41.340 frustrating that is for you and I. Well, you know, we're adults. We can, we can, we can understand,
00:13:45.620 we can contemplate the fact that the world is full of disappointments and that governments are often
00:13:49.900 corrupt and that the power corrupts them indefinitely. But, but these are kids. These
00:13:53.660 are idealistic young people. The way that we are treating them is absolutely unconscionable.
00:13:58.620 Okay. I'm going to read the last little excerpt here. She writes, what's most worrisome to me
00:14:03.140 is that they feel deep worry and shame over the prospect of breaking the rules. Teenage girls are
00:14:07.960 notoriously empathetic. I see many of my students, but especially the female ones feel a heavy burden
00:14:13.320 of responsibility. Right before Christmas, one of my brightest 12th graders confided in me that she was
00:14:17.980 terrified of taking her mask off. She told me she didn't want to get anyone sick or kill anyone.
00:14:22.700 She was worried she would be held responsible for someone dying. What was I supposed to say?
00:14:27.340 That only 23 children have died from COVID in Canada during the whole pandemic and that she is 0.79
00:14:31.780 much more likely to kill someone driving a car. The kids in Scandinavia, Sweden, and the Netherlands
00:14:36.320 largely haven't had to wear masks and their schools haven't seen outbreaks because of it.
00:14:40.860 That masks are not a magical shield against the virus. That even if she were to pass along to a
00:14:45.800 classmate, the risk of them getting seriously sick is minuscule. I want to tell them they can
00:14:50.380 remove their mask and socialize with their friends without being worried, but I'm expected to enforce
00:14:54.700 the rules. At the beginning of the pandemic, adults shamed kids for wanting to play in the park or hang
00:14:58.900 out with their friends. We kept hearing, oh, they'll be fine. They're resilient. It's true. Humans by nature
00:15:03.660 are very resilient, but they also break and my students are breaking. Some have already broken.
00:15:08.520 When we look at the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of history, I believe it will be clear that we
00:15:13.560 betrayed our children. The risks of this pandemic were never to them, but they were forced to carry
00:15:19.080 the burden of it. It's enough. It's time to return to a normal life and put an end to the bureaucratic
00:15:24.280 policies that aren't making society any safer, but are sacrificing our children's mental, emotional,
00:15:29.960 and physical health. Our children need life on the highest volume and they need it now. This is the most
00:15:35.240 important op-ed I have read in months in Canada. I hope that every Canadian will read it. I hope it will have
00:15:40.680 an impact. Again, unfortunate that she had to go to a US Substack in order to publish it. However,
00:15:45.560 obviously, Barry Weiss's Substack has great reach and I'm glad that it did. And I'm glad that I came
00:15:49.720 across it because again, really powerful. Bravo to Stacey Lance, the courageous, brave teacher who
00:15:56.600 published this piece, who had the courage to articulate her views, what she sees with working
00:16:01.720 with students and put it out there. We know that there could be backlash. There could be consequences
00:16:06.200 for articulating this point of view, which is contrary to I'm sure what the teachers unions
00:16:11.320 and the politicians and the health experts want to hear, but it is so important. And again,
00:16:15.960 I hope every Canadian will read this. I'm Candace Malcolm, and this is The Candace Malcolm Show.