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Sept. 3, 2020 - Dennis Prager Show
05:22
Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos on the Dennis Prager Show
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Betsy DeVos, welcome to the Dennis Prager Show.
Thanks, Dennis.
It's great to join you.
Thank you.
By the way, I think I will be with your husband next week in Grand Rapids.
Oh, very good.
That's excellent.
I wish I could be there, too.
Well, I wish you could.
Have a family reunion.
You wrote up an open letter to America's parents and children that I saw at least in one place in the Detroit News.
I want to read to you very quickly and have you comment, given your important position obviously.
This is from the BBC. said that children are more likely to be harmed by not returning to school next month than if they catch coronavirus.
That is how much harm he believes.
This is the UK's chief medical advisor.
How much harm it is to keep kids out of school.
What's your take on that?
Well, I think he's absolutely right, and our own CDC and American Academy of Pediatrics have all opined essentially the same way.
There's one measure of health, and it's whether a child has a coronavirus or not, but there are a lot of other measures of a child's whole health, and that includes their mental well-being, their social and emotional growth.
Not to mention, importantly, their academic growth.
And we have seen consistently over the last several months Students who have been falling further and further behind academically, who are getting, who are isolated, and kids aren't meant to be in isolation.
They need to be with others, particularly with peers, and that's an important part of their development.
And also importantly, we've seen a great decrease in reports of Abuse and neglect that are often most often observed by others outside of their home situation and so when we talk about a child's health we have to talk about the whole child and it is important that they get back to school and they do so in a full-time meaningful way.
So that's your position and what is the overall situation?
Are most American students, putting I guess California aside because it's such a gigantic population, outside of California are most students returning to school, physically returning?
Well we're still gathering data on that and of course it's changing daily but my latest information suggests that about 50% of students will return to in-person school at least in some form.
Whether that's a full-time, day-to-day approach or whether they're cohorting and doing alternate days to, you know, lessen the density or whatever.
But importantly also, there's all too many school districts that are not actually offering their families the opportunity for in-person school.
But are only mandating that everything be done remotely and of course this continues to promote and cause problems for the kids for whom that just doesn't work and for their parents as well.
What is their rationale?
They don't have a science basis for this.
Kids aren't getting sick and dying.
What is their rationale?
You know, the rationale is primarily articulated by the teachers' unions, and they're, you know, sowing fear unnecessarily, and they are also promoting their own very leftist agendas.
I mean, we see in L.A. the teachers' unions saying they're not going to return to the classroom and to in-person instruction or even consider it until it's, quote, safe.
And, oh, by the way, until everybody has universal health care, until the police are defunded, and on and on and on and on, the whole list of leftist demands that they have as part of their agenda that have nothing to do with kids being in school and learning.
Yes, that's right.
This is coming to you, ladies and gentlemen, from the Secretary of Education of the United States.
Just to remind you about the importance of the next election, if we have a Democratic administration, Secretary of Education will side with the Teachers Union.
Just know that.
Reason number 844-3227.
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