Open the Schools

About

Open the Schools is a catchphrase used as a comment on social media to indicate that a certain post is wrong, uninformed or generally stupid and that certain information should be known to its author. Stemming from a viral tweet by former President Donald Trump referring to the reopening of schools during the COVID-19 pandemic, the catchphrase meme achieved virality on X / Twitter in the early 2020s.

Origin

In 2020, during the COVID-19 pandemic, a lockdown was introduced in the United States, with schools closing down for the lockdown and hybrid and virtual learning being introduced for many months.

On August 4th, 2020, former U.S. President Donald Trump wrote on X^[1] / Twitter, "OPEN THE SCHOOLS!!!" calling for the educational facilities to be open as soon as possible. The post (shown below) received over 76,000 reposts and 351,000 likes in four years.

Spread

On X / Twitter, the phrase achieved popularity as a way of indicating that a certain post is wrong, uninformed or stupid, with the joke implying that the author of the post is poorly educated due to not attending school due to it being closed.

On February 13th, 2021, X^[2] user @WildinMonsters made the earliest found viral post based on the catchphrase, using it to caption another person's tweet in which they counted minutes as having 100 seconds in them. The post (shown below) received over 14,000 reposts and 142,000 likes in four years.

On July 24th, 2023, X^[3] user @vidalwuu used the phrase to make fun of a post that misinterpreted a Mount Rushmore reference in the 2023 film Barbie as a reference to Naruto. The post received over 1,300 reposts and 25,000 likes in one year.

Multiple quote posts and replies using the catchphrase went viral on X / Twitter in 2023.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References