Education The K-12 cartel is holding children hostage By Max Eden January 13, 2022 11:00 PM Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Email Print Education The K-12 cartel is holding children hostage By Max Eden January 13, 2022 11:00 PM Twitter LinkedIn Facebook Email Print History never quite repeats itself. But if we don’t learn from it, then it can quickly rhyme in hideous couplets. First, tragedy. Then, farce. Last year’s coronavirus school closures were an unspeakable tragedy for schoolchildren. After the first viral panic, these closures were not driven by the prevalence or danger of the disease, but rather the power and political self-interest of teachers unions. This dynamic was once again on display this month after teachers with the Chicago Teachers Union unilaterally refused to show up for in-person instruction on the pretext of concerns about the omicron variant. Chicago Public Schools was forced to cancel five days of class. School could only reopen after officials gave major concessions to the union. The lesson from this tragicomic farce is that we must call a spade a spade. America does not really have “teachers unions” in the traditional sense — that is, democratically representative entities promoting the collective will of schoolteachers. Instead, these “unions” are structurally, operationally, and essentially cartels. These K-12 cartels were in the business of taking students hostage for ransom well before COVID-19. Yet the past two years of naked self-interest and hypocrisy from...