The Candice Malcolm Show - Ontario Teacher： We Have Betrayed Our Children

00:00:00.000 An Ontario teacher writes a powerful column saying that we have betrayed our children

00:00:05.220 and sadly it has fallen on deaf ears. I'm Candice Malcolm and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:00:13.620 Everyone, thank you so much for joining us. Thank you for tuning in to The Candice Malcolm

00:00:17.880 Show today. Now I'm going to talk about this really powerful sub stack that came out over

00:00:22.560 the weekend, late last week actually, but before we do, just give you a quick update. The big story

00:00:27.100 in the country continues to be the huge trucker convoy heading to Ottawa and the courageous

00:00:33.600 blue-collar warriors who are fighting back and standing up for all of our freedoms. God bless

00:00:39.420 them. We continue to see the legacy media picking up the most negative aspects of the story, trying

00:00:44.520 to paint these people as fringe, trying to say that there's some kind of extremist sort of painting the

00:00:49.500 picture like it could be some kind of a January 6th event or preparing for something like that,

00:00:54.840 or we see them focusing again on the negative like the issues around the GoFundMe page. Regardless,

00:01:01.180 these courageous truckers are persevering and I'll just say the footage is inspiring. It is great to

00:01:07.580 see so many people in this country fighting back and let me just say the estimates of this event are

00:01:12.860 huge. I've heard upwards of half a million people are planning to attend this rally, perhaps up to

00:01:19.880 50,000 truckers heading to Ottawa. So, so, you know, that might be an overshoot, but still those

00:01:26.140 numbers are profound. Like we're talking about some of the biggest rallies in the history of our

00:01:30.980 country. And to me, for someone who has been sort of suffering through the pandemic and feeling at so

00:01:37.480 many times, like our country has walked away from our charter, we've turned our back on our ancient

00:01:42.820 freedoms. We've been willing, so willing to sacrifice them in exchange for safety, in exchange for

00:01:47.620 so-called health, public health, that has made me feel distraught at times. But seeing all of these

00:01:53.480 people is truly inspiring and I hope it inspires you as well. So here's just some video footage from

00:01:59.060 the past 24 hours.

00:02:22.320 And that comes from our friend Andy Lee, who is an independent journalist and reporter who has the

00:02:27.480 Twitter handle Hannah Bananas. And another clip here from Mary Oaks, a tremendous independent

00:02:33.380 journalist who has been providing great footage. So here is a video that she recorded.

00:02:57.480 And interestingly, more and more conservative MPs are throwing their support behind these truckers and 0.94

00:03:06.400 showing critical signs of the vaccine mandates, of the failed policy of vaccine mandates. Of course,

00:03:12.340 very interesting, despite the waffling of their party leader. We have a group of MPs who are just

00:03:18.380 flat out saying that they support the truckers. So here is high profile MP Pierre Polyev saying this

00:03:24.460 is pretty funny. The unmasked partier is worried the guy alone in his truck is spreading COVID,

00:03:29.540 hashtag dust inflation. And of course, we know Justin Trudeau is a massive hypocrite. The rules

00:03:33.460 don't apply to him. And he is punishing blue collar workers. Lesley Lewis, who is a former leadership

00:03:38.640 candidate for the conservatives, wrote this. She says, I'm proud of the truckers. Peaceful protest is

00:03:43.160 a cornerstone of our democracy. The liberal mandates are unscientific, vindictive, mean spirited and

00:03:48.100 promote segregation. The people have a moral obligation to oppose unjust laws and mandates. And she

00:03:54.440 quote tweeted former leader Andrew Scheer, who I read this tweet on the program yesterday, but he

00:03:59.460 writes this. Thank you, truckers. Trudeau is attacking personal liberty and threatening everyone's

00:04:03.420 ability to get groceries because of his overreach on vaccine mandates. He is the biggest threat to

00:04:08.440 freedom in Canada. Absolutely agree with that. Many more conservative MPs are likewise joining in to

00:04:13.820 throw their support behind this movement. Martin Shields writes this. He says, I am in Ottawa awaiting

00:04:18.400 the trucking convoy on its way to the capital. Canadian supply chains are critical and the Trudeau

00:04:23.440 liberal government's mandates and freedom curbing restrictions have gone on too long. It's time

00:04:27.880 to get our freedoms back. Likewise, we have Kevin Way who says this. I supported our local truck

00:04:34.060 drivers as they hit the road in Saskatoon today. It should have never come to this for them. Safe

00:04:38.460 travels and I will see you folks in Ottawa. Shannon Stubbs, great big thanks to the organizers and to

00:04:44.240 everyone taking part. Let's make sure we do whatever we can to show our support to the convoy for

00:04:49.340 Freedom 2022. Really, really just lots of support. Jeremy Patser, huge crowds and swift current for

00:04:55.880 the convoy to Ottawa and he's got some video footage there. Ryan Williams, support the truckers. We need

00:05:01.620 them more than ever. I mean, I could go on and on and on. There are a lot, a lot of MPs throwing their

00:05:07.900 support behind the trucking convoy, which is great to see. And I hope that Aaron O'Toole, the leader of the

00:05:13.540 party, comes around and follows the rest of his party by supporting this convoy and supporting

00:05:18.240 freedom in this country. Okay, I want to talk about this incredible column that was published

00:05:22.980 last Thursday on Barry Weiss's Substack. It was published late last week, written by a woman named

00:05:27.980 Stacey Lance, who describes herself as a proud mother and educator living in Ontario, Canada.

00:05:33.580 It's interesting because I listen to a lot of podcasts and I sometimes get news from the US and

00:05:38.820 I've been hearing about this Substack, this article on Barry Weiss's Substack through a lot of people

00:05:44.060 in the US. And when I finally went to click on it and read it, I realized that it was a Canadian

00:05:48.260 teacher, a Canadian telling her story about the Canadian experience. And to me, that shows two

00:05:53.840 things. One, the fact that Americans are talking about the Canadian experience more than I hear

00:05:57.480 Canadians talking about it is really disappointing. And second, the fact that this op-ed, which is a

00:06:02.820 beautiful, well-written piece, I'm going to read much of it today. The fact that rather than

00:06:07.520 publishing this in a Canadian publication, she didn't publish in the National Post. She didn't

00:06:12.980 go to the Globe and Mail. She didn't go to the Toronto Star. Instead, she went to Barry Weiss.

00:06:17.180 Barry Weiss used to work for the New York Times. And then she sort of left out of protest because of

00:06:20.980 how maddeningly woke that publication has become. And her Substack is very popular. Now it's become

00:06:26.860 sort of like an editorial page for the disaffected, usually like left wing or center left or liberal

00:06:32.680 crowd in the US and really attracting a lot of interesting people. But just the very fact that

00:06:38.440 she submitted her op-ed here. Now, I haven't had the chance to speak to her. We've reached out and

00:06:42.440 waiting to hear back. But I wonder, I mean, it's curious as to why she would go to a US publication

00:06:47.980 rather than going in Canada. And to me, it just shows that perhaps there's just no interest in

00:06:52.200 Canada. There's no appetite for this. I don't know if she tried to submit it to other places and got 0.87

00:06:56.060 rejected or if she just went straight to Barry Weiss because perhaps that's where she gets her news.

00:07:00.100 But either way, it's telling that the independent voices on the internet, the independent journalists,

00:07:05.160 the independent platforms is what is attracting most of the most interesting journalism in the

00:07:11.000 country. Okay, so a bit more about Stacey Lance. She is based in Ottawa. She works as a teacher at

00:07:15.300 the Catholic school. She's worked in this Canadian public school system for the past 15 years. She

00:07:19.960 teaches high school and she teaches morals and ethics in high school. So she is perfectly qualified

00:07:25.120 to be talking about these issues. And the piece that she writes here is called

00:07:29.780 I'm a school teacher. The kids aren't all right. Really, really powerful stuff. And so here we go.

00:07:36.020 Let me just jump right into it. So again, the title is I'm a public school teacher. The kids aren't all

00:07:41.400 right. The subtitle here says my students were taught to think of themselves as vectors of disease.

00:07:46.460 This has fundamentally altered their understanding of themselves. So here she goes. I am proud to be a

00:07:52.140 teacher. I've worked in the Canadian public school system for the past 15 years, mostly at the high

00:07:56.020 school level teaching morals and ethics. I don't claim to be a doctor or an expert in virology.

00:08:00.640 There is a lot I don't know, but I spend my days with our youth and they tell me a lot about their

00:08:05.140 lives. And I want to tell you what I'm hearing and what I'm seeing. Since beginning of the pandemic,

00:08:09.220 when our school went fully remote, it was evident to me that the loss of human connection would be

00:08:13.280 detrimental to our students' development. It also became increasingly clear that the response to the

00:08:17.860 pandemic would have immense consequences for students who are already on the path to long-term

00:08:22.400 disengagement, potentially altering their lives permanently. The data about learning loss and

00:08:27.660 mental health crisis is devastating. Overlooked has been the deep shame young people feel. Our

00:08:32.440 students are taught to think of their schools as hubs for infection and themselves as vectors of the

00:08:37.160 disease. This has fundamentally altered their understanding of themselves. This stuff is so

00:08:41.800 obvious and so true. And yet we rarely hear this point. We rarely hear this perspective. We rarely hear

00:08:46.520 someone so reasonably discussing the pros and cons of our approach and some sort of deeper

00:08:52.980 consequences of these continued lockdowns of telling kids that they have to follow all of these really

00:09:00.320 obscure rules and just the psychological effect of it all. And again, it's really refreshing to hear

00:09:06.340 this. I will continue from this sub stack. She writes, when we finally got back into the classroom in

00:09:11.960 September 2020, I was optimistic. Even when we would go remote for weeks, sometimes months, whenever cases

00:09:17.660 would rise, but things never returned to normal. When we were physically in school, it felt like there was no

00:09:22.920 longer life in the building. Maybe it was the masks that made it so that no one wanted to engage in lessons or even

00:09:28.740 talk about how they spent their weekends. It felt cold and soulless. My students weren't allowed to gather in the

00:09:34.040 halls or chat between classes. They still aren't. Sporting events, clubs and graduation were all

00:09:38.960 canceled. This may sound like small things, but these losses were a huge deal to students. These are rites

00:09:44.840 of passages that cannot be made up. In my classroom, the learning loss is noticeable. My students can't

00:09:51.320 concentrate and they aren't doing the work that I assigned to them. They have way less motivation

00:09:56.160 compared to before the pandemic began. Some of my students chose not to come back at all, either because

00:10:00.920 of fear of the virus or because they are debilitated by social anxiety. And now they have the option to do

00:10:07.080 virtual schooling from home. Again, these are so many points that just need to be made. They need to be

00:10:11.420 discussed. They need to be part of the public discussion. They're so relevant. We're living in a time

00:10:15.880 of immense change, immense progress. And with that progress, I mean, the lives of teenagers today are

00:10:21.780 very different from the lives of teenagers 10 years ago, which are very different from the lives of

00:10:25.600 teenagers 10 years before that. There's just constant change. Everything is new. The introduction of

00:10:30.080 technology, the constant use of social media, the amount of time that children spend on screens and

00:10:35.620 sort of as avatars of themselves is already having a really damaging effect. I mean, read

00:10:40.460 Coddling of the American Mind to sort of understand how the idea of safetyism and protecting children

00:10:45.880 has superseded other things. And because of that, they're not developing in the same rate as previous

00:10:50.660 generations. And then you add on top of that, which was already happening, you know, the trends that

00:10:56.000 they were picking up on that in that book, Jonathan Haidt and Greg Luganov, that, you know, that book was

00:11:00.440 focused on like the 2012 to 2015. I think the book came out around then, 2015, 2016. Obviously, that's

00:11:07.160 all pre-COVID. And you compound that with the impact of forcing kids to stay at home and making

00:11:12.840 everything virtual and isolated. And even when they're back in school, they can't talk, they can't

00:11:17.400 do normal things. Really, again, profound impact. And we don't really seem to ever be talking about

00:11:22.620 this. Okay, I'm going to continue reading from this subsect, because again, I think it is so

00:11:26.320 excellent. So she writes, my older students, grade 11 and 12, aren't allowed a lunch break and are

00:11:32.080 expected to come to school, go to class for five and a half hours, and then go home. Children in

00:11:36.660 ninth and 10th grade have to face the front of the classroom when they eat lunch during a second

00:11:40.400 period class. My students used to be able to eat in the halls of the cafeteria. Now that's forbidden.

00:11:44.620 Younger children are expected to follow the mask off, voices off rule and are made to wear their

00:11:49.360 masks even outside is so absurd, where they can only play with kids in their class. Of course,

00:11:55.420 outside of school, kids are allowed to go to restaurants with their families and to each

00:11:59.080 other's houses, making the rules feel punitive and nonsensical. That's how we all feel. But again,

00:12:04.160 for children, it's hard to even make sense of why adults are telling you to follow rules that are

00:12:08.580 inconsistent and don't make sense. Continue reading. They are anxious and depressed. Previously

00:12:14.020 outgoing students are now terrified at the prospect of being singled out to stand in front of the class

00:12:18.440 and speak. Many of my students seem to have found comfort behind their masks. They feel exposed when

00:12:23.420 their peers can see their whole face. Around this time of year, we start planning for prom,

00:12:27.500 which is usually held in June. Usually my students would already be chatting constantly about who's

00:12:31.620 asking who, what they're planning on wearing and how excited they are. This year, they barely discussed

00:12:36.480 it at all. When they do tell me about it, they say that they don't want to get their hopes up since

00:12:40.420 they're assuming it will get canceled like it has for the past couple of years. It's the same deal

00:12:44.680 with universities. My students say, if university is going to be like this, then what's the point?

00:12:48.900 I have my own children, a nine-year-old daughter and a seven-year-old son who have spent almost a

00:12:52.680 third of their lives in lockdown. They've become so used to cancellations, they don't even feel

00:12:57.000 disappointed anymore. I think all of my students are angry to some degree, but I hear about it most

00:13:01.560 from the kids who are athletes. They are told that if they got the vaccine, everything would go back to

00:13:06.120 normal and they would go back to the rink or the court. Some sports were back for a while, but as of

00:13:10.220 Christmas, because of the recent wave of COVID-19 cases, clubs and varsity sports are all canceled once

00:13:14.840 again. A lot of the athletes are missing chances to be seen by coaches and get scholarships. Again,

00:13:20.620 it's hard to even wrap your head around how devastating this could be for a child. You get

00:13:24.700 one shot. You get one shot to make it, to get a scholarship, to go to college, to try to play

00:13:29.580 in some kind of elite level of your sport. It's being passed by for these children. They're following

00:13:36.020 the rules. They got vaccinated. They did what they were told, and yet they still rip it away.

00:13:40.260 And you think about how frustrating that is for you and I. Well, you know, we're adults. We can,

00:13:44.480 we can, we can understand, we can contemplate the fact that the world is full of disappointments and

00:13:49.060 that governments are often corrupt and that the power corrupts them indefinitely. But, but these

00:13:53.140 are kids. These are idealistic young people. The way that we are treating them is absolutely

00:13:57.120 unconscionable. Okay. I'm going to read the last little excerpt here. She writes,

00:14:01.680 what's most worrisome to me is that they feel deep worry and shame over the prospect of breaking the

00:14:06.620 rules. Teenage girls are notoriously empathetic. I see many of my students, but especially the

00:14:11.900 female ones, feel a heavy burden of responsibility. Right before Christmas, one of my brightest 12th 0.88

00:14:16.380 graders confided in me that she was terrified of taking her mask off. She told me she didn't want 0.90

00:14:20.820 to get anyone sick or kill anyone. She was worried she would be held responsible for someone dying.

00:14:26.320 What was I supposed to say? That only 23 children have died from COVID in Canada during the whole

00:14:30.660 pandemic and that she is much more likely to kill someone driving a car? The kids in Scandinavia,

00:14:35.320 Sweden and the Netherlands largely haven't had to wear masks and their schools haven't seen outbreaks

00:14:39.960 because of it. That masks are not a magical shield against the virus. That even if she were to pass

00:14:45.400 along to a classmate, the risk of them getting seriously sick is minuscule. I want to tell them

00:14:50.180 they can remove their mask and socialize with their friends without being worried. But I'm expected to

00:14:54.420 enforce the rules. At the beginning of the pandemic, adults shamed kids for wanting to play in the park or

00:14:58.780 hang out with their friends. We kept hearing, oh, they'll be fine. They're resilient. It's true. Humans by nature are

00:15:03.960 very resilient. But they also break and my students are breaking. Some have already broken. When we look

00:15:09.360 at the COVID-19 pandemic through the lens of history, I believe it will be clear that we betrayed

00:15:14.260 our children. The risks of this pandemic were never to them, but they were forced to carry the burden

00:15:19.540 of it. It's enough. It's time to return to a normal life and put an end to the bureaucratic policies

00:15:24.800 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

00:15:35.180 most important op-ed I have read in months in Canada. I hope that every Canadian will read it.

00:15:39.920 I hope it will have an impact. Again, unfortunate that she had to go to a U.S. substack in order to 0.99

00:15:44.960 publish it. However, obviously, Barry Weiss's subject has great reach and I'm glad that it did. And I'm glad

00:15:49.420 that I came across it because again, really powerful. Bravo to Stacey Lance, the courageous,

00:15:55.360 brave teacher who published this piece, who had the courage to articulate her views, what she sees

00:16:01.240 with working with students and put it out there. We know that there could be backlash. There could

00:16:05.440 be consequences for articulating this point of view, which is contrary to, I'm sure, what the teachers

00:16:10.680 unions and the politicians and the health experts want to hear, but it is so important. And again,

00:16:16.140 I hope every Canadian will read this. I'm Candice Malcolm, and this is The Candice Malcolm Show.

00:16:20.300 you

The Candice Malcolm Show - January 26, 2022

Ontario Teacher： We Have Betrayed Our Children

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