You know what really stunts kids? Becoming orphans or living in a home where mom and dad are disabled from a disease they could have avoided. It’s all about tradeoffs, and we can handle lunches and social isolation quite a bit easier than long-term damage.
We might just have to accept that this is what it will take to bring Republicans into reality, it’s going to take a war loss at home-level disaster.
So far COVID isn’t this, but 1 million deaths it might be.
Or you lock down until a vaccine, force everyone to take it (by any means necessary, including jailing folks who don’t) , and then try to start over.
I think kids losing a year of school is going to be catastrophic but less harmful than the alternative.
In fact, we know it’s not. I posted some studies done in other countries up thread. Kids are 1/3 as likely to get it but they have at least three times as many social contacts so it evens out in theory. In practice, I suspect a school environment results in more than three times as many social contacts. Indoors over prolonged periods of time with often boisterous talking and playing.
The other study, I believe, showed that asymptomatic children can carry very high viral loads which they can spread very effectively.
Gambling for 6 more months that a Democratic administration can get a handle on this is probably a reasonable bet - it won’t be till April next year, probably, that you see the benefits of that.
The problem is that we’re on the cusp of the Event that spreads COVID everywhere, right now, because once it spreads through school populations, everyone but the hermits and homebody singles is going to be at risk of catching it.
As a parent of three small children, one of whom is in grade school and another in kindergarten, this is an argument near and dear for me.
@vinraith I understand the problems and issues you are worried about, and you are not wrong. This disease has impacts simply beyond death that can be devastating.
But good lord is this a shit situation all around. While you may believe all remote learning is the only proper answer, don’t pretend there aren’t severe costs associated with that. And that is ignoring the parent/ family/ work angle.
My kids lose out in online learning. There are socialization aspects that online learning can’t match, and for very young kids are equally, if not more, important to the actual classroom lessons. Kids my kids age aren’t good at independent learning, and struggle with some things. The learning experience is sub par, many if not most kids will fall behind where they should be.
And you know who shoulders the worst of that? Primarily those already struggling the most. Poor and minority communities who already have resource issues, who are less likely to have parents who can dedicate the time due to their jobs, whose parents cant spend a few thousand on special assistance to make up the gap.
And what of those with learning conditions that require specialized methods? Or those who need the meal programs to ensure they have access to proper nutrition. Or those who have unsafe domestic situations. How many more kids will have domestic abuse issues that go unreported?
Kids will be harmed, no matter the choice. My son, who has no such complicating factors and one parent who only works part time and both working from home for the indeterminate future term? He is still harmed. Not in the worst case, but I can assure you that he has behavioral and learning struggles that he would not have otherwise. And we really represent a best case scenario.
So you may believe it is the best outcome, you may even be right, but do not pretend this is a good outcome.
This sucks, kids are harmed, period. Keeping kids out of school is a bad option. It may just be all other options are worse (I disagree, I do think some of the hybrid options can be better if done well, some in person interaction really is that important, especially for young kids)
This whole outdoor thing is inspiring, i need to get everyone on board with that. Classical Greek style teaching sounds like a blast to participate and teach!
So, I can understand why nationwide coordination on school reopening is impossible in the current circumstances. But shouldn’t there be state or country level planning for this as well? It sounds crazy to me that on the local level there wouldn’t be some plausible plans for how to do this safely.
Instead of:
Just imo, but the problem is that we don’t really have barriers between regions that you’d need. We’re not the HRE, not yet anyway, and don’t have customs borders. Even when a governor tells that people must quarantine entering her state, she has no way to enforce her authority which exists basically only on paper or maybe the occasional traffic stop. So even if there are some communities that do a great job, one county over everyone is screwing up. It doesn’t take long for the bad actors to ruin the work of the good.
That’s a great poster, btw.
But how will it work? A kid tests positive he’s out for a two-week minimum, right? And the other kids in the class, don’t they need to be out for a few days to quarantine? And then you repeat the process each time another kid tests positive? In the lower grades at least it’s easier to contain things to one class. In high school the curriculum is so much more diverse there’s no way to keep a “pod” of high school students isolated from others.
Or do you just send home the kid who tests positive and keep the other kids in class and cross your fingers?
The alternative is homeschooling, which has always been an option. You have to fill out an application with the state. So, there is basically no option if you want to attend public school. This is how it’s going to be.
I can see both sides of this debate, as a parent of elementary aged kids. My kids are depressed right now. They’re miserable and unhappy, and feel like prisoners. They complain all day how bored they are. My daughter cries that she has no friends anymore and she misses her friends.
On the other hand, I don’t want them to die. Now, I already got Covid in April. My kids didn’t get tested, but there’s no way in hell they didn’t catch it from me when they were with me. After I got tested they stayed with me for another week to wait out the quarantine period then went back to their mom. I’m not super worried about them going back to school.
I am super worried about their teachers and the other kids. What’s going to be more traumatizing, loneliness and depression for another year, or remembering that year in 3rd grade when 2 teachers and 10 kids died to Coronavirus and constantly panicking that you could be next? Do I want to hug my kids when they’re crying about being lonely or when they’re crying that they might die from going to school because a kid in their grade did? “He was fine daddy then he died. What if I have it?”
I don’t want to do that. Pay us to stay home and do online lessons with our kids.
No and, accordingly, we should keep kids remote for the next six months or a year or two years. Which is problematic on many different levels but none of them as bad as throwing up our hands and putting them in mortal danger while also helping to make the Covid situation even worse than it was already going to be this fall and winter.
“This is not good” is still way way better than “This is a fucking catastrophe.”
Six months is not short time in teenage years. I’m not saying a return to normalcy is sane, just that not even trying to have a way that may even not happen is also terrible.
We’ll have returns to school here in much better conditions with better plans, but I’ll still be stocking up and staying home more then - I’m not pretending there is no risk, if nothing else due to fatigue, but COVID is not the only very real problem people have to deal with.
Maybe we need to think outside the box. Childhood hunger, neglect, lack of adequate childcare and social isolation have been issued in this country for a while and we’ve yet to solve them. What if, instead of continuing to try we just set the kids on fire? Maybe we could pack all of the hungry children into sailing ships and launch them into the ocean? I’m not saying these are good solutions but they are definitely alternatives.
I think remote learning has the potential for some SERIOUS income disparity hits. My school district (SF Bay Area) is going to be full remote. We are fortunate that we have a big house, multiple computers, high-speed, high-bandwidth internet, and two parents who both can work from home.
Families living in small apartments, without access to technology, and with one or more parents working outside the home are going to have disadvantaged kids, disproportionate to their peer group. Much more than traditional on-site public school. It’s a serious, serious cost to having schools closed.
There are no easy answers.
We’re in the middle of a pandemic here in the U.S. Other countries may be faring better but we sort of suck at doing what it takes. We came out of lockdown too early. People needed their haircuts and their nails done.
Things are different and will stay different until we get through this. The thing about normal school is I’m convinced it will throw gasoline on the fire and the schools will shut down anyway, so why go through that pain? Granted, I could be completely wrong. That’s my take on it.
I was responding to those saying all schools should remain closed and do only remote learning. That is a bad option. It is better than throwing hands in the air and saying ‘oh well’, but only because that is so horrific.
And I think it becomes more reasonable to more more online with older kids. There is strong differences in how a Kindergartener, middle schooler, or high school senior would handle online classes. And as kids get older it works better.
But young grade school kids? Its the fucking worst, let me assure you. Even for me, who is working from home full time and as an engineer can do very well with home lessons. It still sucks, at best, and I can observe how my son and his classmates handled it.
Poorly. It was better than nothing, but it was a damn far sight from anything approaching good.
As for how to handle kids and positive tests? Well doing things like staggered days, pods, etc help. Limit exposure vectors while also providing some critical interaction. And, yeah, any kid (or family member) who tests positive? Entire class shuts down in person for minimum two weeks. So one parent positive, entire class closes.
And here’s the other thing, I live in Oregon, which has done about as well as any state has regarding outbreaks. I think the potential for being able to do some in class is higher than, say, Georgia.
But there is no perfect answer. I just think the ‘all schools close and do remote learning only for 1-2 years until a vaccine is widely produced’ is a tragedy of such horrific proportions that this is contemplated as the ‘good’ option is mind boggling. You may believe it the best one, but I take offense to considering this a good one.
We are in a miserable situation where there are no good options, and are stuck with a series of very shitty ones. But with examples of countries having been able to have some in class teaching without creating outbreaks I believe we need to look at those and figure out how to replicate that.
As well as looking at those who did it wrong and figure out how not to do that.
And, yeah, there are some states that do not have a way to do any amount of in person school safely. But there are some who can.
My school district has managed to provide lunches since the kids went remote without boats or burning children. Crazy, but true. They’ve also been able to provide every kid with a Chromebook and set up multiple wifi hotspots throughout the district.
It isn’t ideal by any measure, but a hell of a lot better than sending them back into a building during a raging pandemic.
Not saying you are, just asking not to ignore the cost. Stepsongrapes and Craig touched on the problems on the student side, but they also exist on the school side: bad/insufficient equipment, untrained teachers, different skillset used in remote teaching…
Maybe some states can have classes with reasonably low risk and should try it while being ready to quickly change gears, I guess is the upshot.
God damn this fucking virus is the other upshot, I guess. And whoever thinks it is/sells it as just a normal flu.
That sounds like a lot of work. What if we just killed their parents and see how the kids figure it out on their own? It’s a bad solution but easier than putting in work.
Here’s the thing that lots of folks don’t acknowledge:
Your kids barely learn anything in school. School doesn’t actually provide a lot of useful stuff.
School is daycare. That’s the real reason that folks, especially the GOP, are so eager to have kids back… because then it means their parents can go back to work.