I remember how it was -- JR
Wednesday, November 03, 2021
Glenn Youngkin Wins Virginia, Blazing 2022 Trail for GOP Through American Schools
Republican Glenn Youngkin sailed to victory in Virginia's gubernatorial race against Terry McAuliffe on Tuesday, giving the GOP a successful template for 2022.
Youngkin won with 51 percent of the vote, when the race was called early Wednesday morning by multiple networks. The race was widely viewed as a test of whether the Republican party's campaign against issues like critical race theory in schools would prove a sound strategy heading into the 2022 midterm elections.
Critical race theory stood at the forefront of Virginia's election as the race narrowed between the two candidates. Youngkin told voters he would ban CRT from Virginia schools, while McAuliffe called discussion of CRT a "dog whistle" and said parents shouldn't be telling schools what they teach. Strategists suggested the issue would play a critical role with suburban voters in 2022, which Youngkin's victory may all but confirm.
Democrats painted Youngkin as an extension of Trump, criticizing him for accepting Trump's endorsement, while McAuliffe hit his opponent for Trump closing out the campaign with a tele-rally. Youngkin, however, marketed himself to voters as a moderate Republican who, although aligned with Trump, wasn't a blind supporter of the former president. He's spoken about election integrity and endorsed audits of voting systems, but stopped short of endorsing Trump's claim that Biden didn't properly win the election.
Virginia has trended blue in recent years, and President Joe Biden won the state in 2020 by more than 10 points. However, polls leading into election day showed Youngkin and McAuliffe neck and neck, causing both parties to deploy massive resources to the state.
What, exactly, Youngkin's win means for Trumpism, and Donald Trump himself, in the coming elections remains unclear, given Youngkin's relative distance from the former president.
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How coronavirus mask mandates are dividing America's school system
When American schools reopened in August after a year of on-and-off home-schooling, it reignited the debate around whether students should be made to wear masks.
What started as a response to the pandemic public health crisis morphed into a heated argument about personal liberty and parental rights.
Health experts continued to advocate for every line of defence to suppress the highly contagious Delta variant of Covid-19, including all the familiar proven strategies - mask wearing, vaccination, social distancing and regular hand washing.
But as the stoush over masking became hyper-politicised, important health messaging was drowned out.
The southern state of Florida, led by Republican Governor Ron DeSantis, has led the push-back against mandates and lockdowns. And his supporters have been emboldened.
“I haven't worn a mask through this whole thing. I haven't worn it,” says Florida father-of-three Tayari Appiah, as he sits with his children in a park in the north central town of Gainesville.
It’s a weekday and while the rest of Florida’s students have returned to classroom learning, Mr Appiah's kids have not. “I started home-schooling my children, I think about it's been a month or two months,” says Mr Appiah.
“When I tried to take my daughter to school, they wanted to force her to wear a mask, but I told them not to do that. And they still wanted to pressure her and put a mask on her,” he says. “I was livid and I think it was a violation of the law.”
Gainesville is somewhat of an outlier in Florida. When most of the state said no to mask and vaccine mandates, this small town, which hosts several major hospitals and a strong medical community, went the other way.
The board that oversees schools in Gainesville followed the advice of local health experts and made masks mandatory on school grounds for the first eight weeks of the new school year.
Anger amongst Republicans mounted and the governor intervened. Mr DeSantis tried to ban mask mandates and stripped funding from any school boards defying his edict, starting in Gainesville.
The controversy went all the way to the White House. President Joe Biden pledged support and replacement funding for school boards adamant on masking students.
Mr DeSantis also introduced a controversial legal safeguard called the Parents Bill of Rights in June, which sought to take the decision over masks away from schools and give it back to parents.
“I used that law the next day, the very next day in my child's school system and my child's school said that they did not care about the law and that their policy supersedes the law,” Mr Appiah says.
“So at that point I realised that I'm probably going to have to pull my kids out of school.”
As the Delta variant of Covid-19 spreads, anti-mask parents recite what’s become a common catch cry: “We do not co-parent with the government”.
Mother-of-three Michelle Childers has led the pushback against masking in Gainesville and launched the local chapter of a pro-choice - not to be confused with pro-abortion - group called Moms for Liberty.
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Australia: Parents who home schooled deserve payment
Parents who looked after children during lockdowns should get payment for doing so, according to one of the country's top demographers.
"We had JobKeeper, JobSeeker - but we also should have had HomeTeacher," Professor Lyndall Strazdins of the ANU said.
She says that parents who oversaw education - often while doing their own job from home - have been "overlooked". They should have been given a wage subsidy for their "invisible" work.
"Parents couldn't stick their kids on a computer and leave them for eight hours while they were working. They had to motivate, support them and be there to help them learn."
"Where was HomeTeacher?" Professor Strazdins asked.
"There could have been an opportunity for parents to take parental leave, similar to what they can access after having a baby, so they could take an absence from their work and actually do the other job of home schooling.
"Parents have faced the impossible conflict between trying to manage their job and trying to manage their children's future."
New South Wales has announced a one-off payment of $250 to people who home-schooled students. The professor said that was a "promising start".
But more was needed to help parents, she felt "particularly women and single parent families".
"When we entered lockdowns across much of the country, parents were suddenly forced to take on an entirely new job in an entirely new environment, without training, while managing their day job."
Another ANU specialist echoed Professor Strazdins.
Professor Peter Whiteford, an expert on social policy, said: "The pandemic exposed many of the weaknesses in our system of social protection. We need to think about what the future holds and if our social policy settings are able to cover the new risks we will face."
About a fifth of Australian households have children of school age - almost two million households, according to the Australian Bureau of Statistics,
Professor Strazdins also argues that the lockdowns and the disruption of the COVID-19 pandemic had entrenched long-standing inequality, with women still having to do the majority of "invisible" work.
"The new normal looks a lot like the old normal. This invisible work often falls to women," she said.
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My other blogs: Main ones below
http://dissectleft.blogspot.com (DISSECTING LEFTISM)
http://antigreen.blogspot.com (GREENIE WATCH)
http://pcwatch.blogspot.com (POLITICAL CORRECTNESS WATCH)
http://australian-politics.blogspot.com/ (AUSTRALIAN POLITICS)
http://snorphty.blogspot.com/ (TONGUE-TIED)
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