#The city DOE’s ‘child soldiers’ and other commentary

Education beat: The City DOE’s ‘Child Soldiers’

The city’s Department of Education has “a potent cudgel” against those who oppose scrapping the Specialized High School Admissions Test for its top high schools, reports The Washington Free Beacon’s Aaron Sibarium: the student group Teens Take Charge. “Weaponized as child soldiers,” these teens malign and provoke adult critics, who get “accused of attacking kids” if they respond — much like the Chinese Red Guard, or what Hamas does with human shields, a parent born in China said. Parents suspect DOE uses these kids to promote its anti-test agenda by ­encouraging, defending and coordinating with them. Ironically, Asian Americans, who score best on the test, have “the highest poverty rate,” while the teens against it “are often the rich kids who couldn’t ace it.”

Iconoclast: Why Dems Disdain Homemakers

“Young feminists, progressives and [lefty] social-media trolls” react ­violently to pro-family ideas and policy proposals, observes Michael Lind at Tablet, not least those aimed at letting young moms stay home with kids — though a majority of US adults believe it’s best for new mothers to work part-time or not at all. “Why is it that most progressives, who ardently defend choice when it comes to abortion,” prefer one-size-fits-all models for child care, pushing universal daycare and other programs that assume moms should work out of the home? One answer: teachers’ unions. “Removing child care from the home, and thereby ­expanding the public-school monopoly to children younger than school age, translates into more jobs and money for unionized public school teachers — and thus more donations to the Democratic Party.” A bonus: The union donations are “out of the pockets of American taxpayers.”

From the right: West Is Forfeiting to China

New evidence makes it “highly credible that COVID-19 originated ­inside a Chinese state laboratory — and that China knew about it” long before the January 2020 Wuhan lockdown, fumes Creators Syndicate’s Ben Shapiro. We may never know the full truth, since “the same [World Health Organization] that covered for China in the early days of the pandemic is responsible for investigating Chinese malfeasance today,” and the Biden administration is reluctant to demand answers. “China’s possible unwitting release of COVID-19 and its fully documented cover-up are a unique opportunity to recalibrate the West’s relationship with” Beijing, but the West shows an utter “unwillingness to face down China’s authoritarian regime.” Meanwhile, the Communist regime “grows increasingly aggressive,” knowing that “all it has to do is outlast us. And right now, . . . China seems well-positioned to do so.”

Foreign desk: Crack Down on Dictators

Belarus under strongman Alexander Lukashenko has long been guilty of “police brutality and the unlawful detention of opposition activists,” but its “latest tyrannical action” — intercepting a Irish plane flying between two EU member states — is a telling step beyond purely domestic abuses, warns Tim Ogden at Spectator USA. “Fear and a sense that the West will never stand up to the world’s dictators” let thuggish leaders know they will “get away with such brazen acts against their own populace and with flouting international law.” Weak calls for minor sanctions “never seem to affect those in charge,” and “the desire to avoid escalation, by way of appeasement or limp ­expressions of outrage, cannot avoid or prevent major international incidents or conflict.” So the dictators’ outrages get steadily worse. “Brussels and Washington have mastered Teddy Roosevelt’s maxim of speaking softly — but they have forgotten the part about carrying a big stick.”

Media Watch: Biased Reporting Breeds Hate

Reporting on the Israel-Gaza conflict “is so relentlessly skewed and committed to the dogma that Israel is an apartheid state and a brutal ­aggressor,” Misha Mansoor points out at Spiked, that it has empowered anti-Semitism in the West, including social-media comments “rabidly hating on the Israelis and the Jews in general, with no shame.” Coverage routinely “brushes aside or says nothing about the avowed murderous intentions of Hamas and its supporters.” Media “need to stop ignoring” the ugly truth “that if Hamas had the opportunity, it would wipe out ­every Jew on earth.”

— Compiled by The Post Editorial Board