specifically primary and secondary school, although university is an issue as well
i put this in a comment but:
i think the school issue is difficult. if you go back to school, you will have massive increases in cases and deaths. if you go online only, you put enormous pressure on parents - schools are responsible for feeding many children and often act as daycare. if you do a “hybrid” approach you’ll get the worst of both worlds, except it’ll likely be primarily lower-income children going to school and getting sick, plus more pressure on teachers.
It's a really hard question because the social safety net in the US is ass and we rely too heavily on the school system to fill our gaps. Personally, as someone who grew up in an abusive household, I think a lot about the kids who no longer have anywhere safe in their lives.
That's the topic for my next branch meeting
Worst part about online only is that LOTS of low income kids don't have access to good internet or any at all, and are completely cut off and have been in areas except when teachers delivered stuff to them as a stop gap in my area
That might not be strictly true re: international students. Visas are a bitch, some are choosing to maintain their Visa by staying in school no matter what. Hell, where I work we've seen a slight increase in last-second international applicants who don't get financial aid or scholarships
Sending kids back to school will see a whole lot of people getting sick and dying.
Homeschooling isn’t that bad. Will it be worse for poor families? Yeah, of course. But everything is, including this coronavirus.
Ideally we should see redistribution to give parents the time to stay home and help their kids, and to give them the resources they need.
But we won’t. Because deep down, people resent teachers for getting to spend their day taking care of children, and they want them to die of pneumonia.
of course, but that's not nearly as tangible or immediate of an issue so people don't worry about it in the same way
i’m not sure about homeschooling not being that bad. are you really going to leave 5 year olds alone at home every day when you go to work? there’s no way most people can afford to have someone teach their kids one-on-one, and learning in person is hugely important for development in young kids (obviously not as important as not dying).
the issue i see is that people won’t want online school at all. if you have to choose between the very abstract danger of covid and the in-your-face reality of not knowing how to keep your child safe for 10 hours a day, i think many, if not most, will choose in-person school
We have preschool aged kids and we are currently trying to figure our shit out. Online learning is pointless for 2-4 year olds and social distancing is pretty much impossible to enforce. But working full time and caring for two kids full time is wearing my wife and I out.
Fun fact: two weeks before Corona hit, I told my wife how burnt out I was. Stupid native past tense me.
My grade school teacher SO has been in meetings planning the specifics of what school opening will look like at the sites she works at and I hope everybody knows we're gonna lose parents, teachers, and kids. They have nowhere near the resources needed to keep their classrooms and materials disinfected to a safe level, the kids don't have the discipline to distance and follow sanitary rules, and there are teachers on staff that think everyone is worrying too much lol. On an unrelated note does anybody have a good source on proper N95 masks in any sort of quantity? The district is only looking at distributing debris masks and maybe cloth ones love this place.
I teach physics in a public urban high school, and I know that there is absolutely no way public schools will be able to be "socially distanced".
- the hallways are at best 6ft wide (5ft if you count the space lockers take up)
- there are around 1800 students enrolled and around 100 teachers
- my classroom is large but all of the seats are comprised of long tables designed to fit 3 students side-by-side
- there is no central heating or air conditioning, so no possibilities for anything but the most janky of HVAC systems, let alone air filtration (fat lot of good that will do anyway when a student can just accidentally spray you with respiratory droplets when asking a question)
- cafeteria, nope
- physics labs, nope
- group activities, nope
- vast inequality in having " hybrid models " (students divided into cohorts, come to school in rotations, fridays are online, everyone wears masks) not only due to teachers/students being unable to appropriately juggle such chopped up learning, but you can basically guarantee that students with hearing disabilities will be further disadvantaged by being unable to read lips or hear teachers/students talk through muffled masks (goes double for students who are English Language Leaners)
- not even enough textbooks to give one to each student, velocity and acceleration won't be the only vectors students encounter this year
- and probably more that I'm forgetting
Because of these above reasons, pretty much every union in my state/city/district is calling for at most fully online for the beginning of the year until "conditions are safer", and calls for more funding for citywide internet and technology (mainly chromebooks, ugh) guarantees for all students.
State/City/District governments where I live have started meeting and making decisions without input from teacher's unions so we're taking part in the National Day of Resistance tomorrow (hoping it leads to a teacher's strike, but currently it looks like a letter signing/petition ugh)
Personally I think they should postpone the school year until maybe January (students already have content retention loss from the shutdowns from March until now, better to keep them safe than hope they remember algebra, we always end up reteaching basics for the first few months anyway) and then extend it through the summer (those HVACs would come in handy during increasingly warm summers too).
On the one hand, if we reopen schools, a lot of people are going to die.
On the other hand, if we don't reopen schools, who the fuck cares didn't you read the previous point?
I have one class that meets every 2 weeks in person. They're using a system called blendflex, so its half online and half in person, only the in person stuff is still mandatory. I live 2 hours away from my university. Its so dumb. Normally I would live near campus, but I got rid of my apartment and moved in with my parents because they didnt give any updates before my lease was up, and I dont want to get stuck in a lease I don't need.
They should be closed (at least in the US), because we need to stop the spread of the virus. That's really all there is to it, imo. Yes, that will make things difficult for a lot of people - that's the consequence of not taking the threat seriously in the first place. But we have to do whatever it takes to stop the spread.
Countries that have effectively handled the virus have been those that were willing to make sacrifices, and because they accepted those sacrifices, they don't have to lose as much. Because we were not willing to make sacrifices, now the cost has gone up. But it's still the same choice - as long as we refuse to make sacrifices, the amount we'll need to sacrifice will continue to increase.
We should only reopen schools when it's safe to do so. That's all there is to it. I get the argument but I still think it's really a black and white issue tbh.
