New York has made Lunar New Year a state school holiday. In case you're from Mars — or, in fact, from most of America or Planet Earth — it's something celebrated in many Asian cultures.
But now we're supposed to celebrate not only our own holidays, but everybody's. Such cultural broad-mindedness is admirable in a sense. A real "Kumbaya" thing. Though one might think the point of a public holiday is that it's something everyone celebrates. Whereas only a small percentage of New Yorkers whoop it up for Lunar New Year.
Still, all this inclusiveness would be fine, but must celebrating Lunar New Year mean no school? How many kids, on the day off, will even give it a thought? Meantime we've really got a crisis in U.S. education. Many indicators show American students lagging behind those of other advanced nations, in terms of how much they actually learn. That's a factor in our "help wanted" crisis, with businesses finding it hard to get workers capable of performing the jobs.
Black and other disadvantaged kids often get particularly poor schooling. A disadvantage aggravated by the pandemic. And lately all that's been compounded by a school absenteeism epidemic — shockingly high numbers of kids just don't show up in class.
And New York's answer is . . . to add a new no-school day?
Kudos to our local Assembly member Pat Fahy, who questioned, "Where does this end?" We often disdain "the politicians." Pat is a great public asset.
While I'm at it — New York schools have also lately been plagued by lockdowns due to phoned-in bomb threats. They're called "swatting," by kids who get kicks from watching authorities go nuts. Lockdowns just encourage them. Has there ever — ever — been a phoned bomb threat where there was actually a bomb?? This is just more stupidity subtracting from students' time in classrooms.
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