Editorial: Children caught in crossfire of battles over school mask mandate
Threats, name-calling, bullying. For months on end, the school masking issue has inspired behavior from parents that they would in no way tolerate from their children. And that debate spiraled into chaos Monday as schools grappled with Friday's temporary restraining order by a downstate judge regarding school mask mandates.
The cries for masking "freedom" and school board shouting matches that followed that day, falling on Charles Dickens' birthday, might have literature buffs recalling his memorable best of times/worst of times opening to "A Tale of Two Cities":
"It was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity ... it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair."
It does indeed feel this week as if we are slogging through that winter of despair. And a spring of hope seems so very, very far away - no matter what Woodstock Willie says.
Yet, we must start working our way there. We begin by putting the physical and emotional needs of children first, not making their schools a battleground.
Children have endured nearly two years of uncertainty brought on by the pandemic. They've ping-ponged between at-home learning and classroom instruction. They've missed out on school traditions, suffered through teacher shortages, listened in as bitter battles over remote learning and masks raged around them.
Should they really have to worry about bullying over masks?
Speaking to WBEZ, Barrington mom Jackie Zagrans recounted stories about students who felt peer pressure to take off their masks and a child pulling masks off younger students.
"There were threats made," she said. "There was a great deal of ugliness in the hallways, in the classrooms and at the lunch table."
However deeply parents are divided on masking, we hope they can agree on this: Children should not be threatened for choosing to wear a mask - or not to.
This kind of ugliness has no place in our schools.
Listen, getting through a school day can be difficult for many kids as it is. It does none of them any favors to compound the problem.
In addition, we must tone down the rhetoric aimed at teachers and other school officials caught in the middle of lawyers, state leaders and angry parents. They have a right to feel safe in their classrooms. If they can't, how can they help our children? And how can we retain top-notch educators when we treat them so poorly?
No, we are not in the best of times - by anyone's definition. But wallowing in the worst, especially when it involves children, is hardly the solution.