COVID facts: Teachers need to tell students the truth about vaccines and masks
Teachers have a duty to correct the falsehoods about COVID-19, whether they're vaccinated or not.
For the past few months, we’ve debated whether teachers should be vaccinated against COVID-19 before returning to school. But I have a different question: What will they say about the subject when they get there?
My answer is simple: Teachers should share the best scientific knowledge with their students, or they shouldn’t be teachers at all.
That sounds harsh, in a nation dedicated to freedom of thought. But as the late Sen. Daniel Patrick Moynihan famously quipped, everyone is entitled to their own opinions but not to their own facts.
And the facts are clear: Vaccines help prevent the spread of COVID-19. That doesn’t necessarily mean we should mandate them, which is a political question that reasonable people can debate. But there is no real debate about whether vaccines reduce the transmission of the disease. The only question is whether our teachers will transmit that fact to their students.