Virginia teacher’s political rant against Republicans caught on tape

This is what is happening in America’s high schools:

Via Instapundit, the Committed Conservative explains what’s going on:

The students in this class, to my understanding, were primarily freshman. For those of us who have High School kids, we certainly understand how impressionable they can be. Notice, this teacher begins discussing the importance of “checks and balances” in our country. No one disputes that. She then says that “the Republicans, which are in the majority in the Senate, the House … and everything else, have decided to do what they want.” By this she infers that the GOP has upset the checks and balances she says are in the Constitution. She then claims that while the committees, like “clubs” have rules, the Republicans decided on that day to “suspend the rules and do what they want.” Of course, the key to her view of this GOP malfeasance is when she explains to the students that republicans can do this because the “democrats weren’t there today.”

Nowhere in this description of events does she give her students context about the committee, its rules, or far more importantly, why the democrats were not there that day. In fact, if you listen to the tape closely, she almost misspeaks by telling the truth that the democrats, in political protest, refusing to attend the committee hearing to prevent a vote. Instead, she tells these 13, 14, and 15 year-olds that the democrats just weren’t there, and so the republicans changed the rules on them, as if they waited until they went to lunch to steal their Twinkies.

As this teacher describes our political process, the republicans said, “let’s just throw out the rules and do what we want.” She later tells the students, “that’s exactly what they did.” She then lets the kids know she gets her description from “reading the news … the real news.” She doesn’t tell the students what the real news source is, nor does she explain her statement about real news versus fake or false news. Her very powerful statement to those kids is unmistakable. Her message was harsh. I am giving you the news … from a trusted source and through a trusted source. I am telling you, the republicans unfairly changed the rules today when the democrats were away to do what they want and to eliminate our system of checks and balances.

By the way, the students in this class were mostly freshmen:

In the situation described above, the teacher leaves out the critical fact.  How does she not tell these kids that the minority refused to participate in the hearing.  The minority did not have the votes to stop the nominee, and it ran out of rules and procedures for delaying the vote.  Accordingly, without the votes to stop the cabinet appointment, the democratic senators on that committee and others decided not to show up.  They did this to try to stop the vote and deny the President a cabinet by effectively shutting down the committee work.   The rule that was changed was the rule requiring a certain number of Senators on the committee to be present in order to have a quorum and call a vote.  Without that change, the minority would have abused the rules and denied the vote.  Not a single slice of this information was shared with the young students in this class.

Likewise, this teacher might have noted that of the prior four presidents, they all had most of their cabinet set within 14 days of Inauguration. Bush 41 had 9 of 14.  Clinton had 13 of 14.  Bush 43 had 13 of 14, and Mr. Obama had 12 of 15 nominees approved.  After 18 days, with an all GOP majority, Mr. Trump still didn’t have 11 of his 15 cabinet members.

Mind you, undoubtedly many kids in this class have parents who are republicans, or the kids may themselves identify with the republican party.  The teacher essentially tried to paint them as part of a group that cheated the democratic Senators, changed the rules, and effectively destroyed the checks and balances this teacher described to her class.

When I first heard the tape, I thought perhaps that the teacher was simply ignorant or misinformed.   That is, so incredulous was I that it occurred to me that this person may not fully understand any of this process, in which case she is at fault for setting out an example without sufficient knowledge.  However, after my second, third, and 20^th listen, it was obvious from the tone, the intentional slip up in the description, and the way the entire issue was framed that this was pure, political, misinformation.  This teacher meant to misinform students and to denigrate any student who would align with people who would cheat our checks and balances.

I was not present in this room when the class continued.  Is it possible she cleared all this up afterwards?  Sure, but I don’t think so because of the way she misrepresented the facts.

Is this what America’s high schools have become?  When you sent your kids to school, do you expect them to be actually taught wrong things?  Do you expect the teachers to malign the values you have instilled in your own children?

We can’t let this continue to happen in America.