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Schools have to reopen by fall


RoseGoesToYale

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nanogretchen4

We should wait until the great majority of the population is vaccinated before opening schools. Every type of contagious illness spreads like wildfire in schools. Kids take the illness home to their parents, who spread it to their coworkers. The kids visit their grandparents and/or the parents are taking care of the grandparents, and the grandparents end up dead. Many of the teachers and administrators are in high risk categories. Kids end up with dead teachers and grandparents, maybe even dead parents. Dead is forever. The educational impact of a missed year of school sets the kids back one year at worst. If they are old enough to read, they might learn as much at home as they would have at school. And if they are in kindergarten or first grade, keep in mind that some countries with better school systems than the US don't start formal schooling until age 7. What this is really about is wanting the schools to provide free babysitting because the current administration is unwilling to provide financial support to parents who need to take care of their kids.

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nanogretchen4

Right. I'm assuming it will take another year, minimum. So, no in person school for another year, then. 

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nanogretchen4

So, it sounds like you are saying that in person school might never be reasonably safe again. In that case, we will have to restructure our education system to adapt to the new normal. But the vaccine is being fast tracked and I'm fairly optimistic that it can be rolled out about a year from now. In that case we would be able to reopen in person schools in fall 2021, yay! 

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Alawyn-Aebt

I don't think holding out for a vaccine would help or be practical in the short run. Neither would continued lockdown until COVID-19 cases cease. The historical nature of pandemics, if this is truly a pandemic worthy of the name, is that nearly everyone gets sick until herd immunity is reached. Throughout history all of the great diseases hit nearly everyone that the disease could reach until herd immunity existed. Lockdown to me just seems to be trying to slow the spread. But lockdowns have huge costs on people in other ways. Online learning is a massive pain for a huge number of people, if it continues students will not learn as much as they could in class. Schools must learn to account for this. But sadly, in today's test-centric system of education, I am not sure they will/can. Colleges face the same issue but also have funding pinches. Not to mention how socioeconomic standing impacts how well students are able to cope with online learning.

 

Yet at the same time it is not feasible to not have school. People need to learn, a gap for many would mean they would lose progress and would have to restart at potentially a much lower level. It is easier for college students, but college students face their own financial struggles (especially with very few college students qualifying for the $1200) and many who depart college never return. On top of that people have plans. COVID-19 already disrupted my plan to study abroad and to minor in archaeology. Even the most basic plan of classes is tied to the semester. I really do not want to do another online class ever but then I have to wait until next fall to get the classes I need. Many language classes and selective programs offer classes in series, with one in fall followed by one in spring, and you cannot take them out of order. Cancelling it, or even moving it online, would be a disaster for those sorts of classes, especially language ones. That would mean not only an extra semester, but an extra year. All the pressure to build a resume also cannot simply cease. Putting how one was chosen for study abroad but was cancelled for COVID doesn't fill the gap that actually listing the experience would be. In a world where both experience and college degree is needed for any job beyond the most basic service work (and even sometimes for that too) the inability to get experience is a major problem for college students. Internships, which I despise but seem to be the only option for getting experience in a chosen field, have been cancelled as well.

 

In sum: I completely agree, schools and colleges have to reopen.

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nanogretchen4

All these problems have solutions and/or are not as serious as a massive wave of preventable deaths. If college students defer classes for a year, then they defer. If public school students actually fall an entire year behind and can't catch up, which is unrealistically pessimistic for the majority of students, they will graduate a year later. The school systems could simply acknowledge that standardized testing can't just go ahead as if there were no pandemic. The government could provide an adequate social services safety net so that parents could take care of their children. We should not be willing to sacrifice hundreds of thousands of human lives to accommodate bad choices by our government and our school systems. We should demand that our representatives make better choices.

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RoseGoesToYale
17 minutes ago, nanogretchen4 said:

So, it sounds like you are saying that in person school might never be reasonably safe again. In that case, we will have to restructure our education system to adapt to the new normal. But the vaccine is being fast tracked and I'm fairly optimistic that it can be rolled out about a year from now. In that case we would be able to reopen in person schools in fall 2021, yay! 

I just don't think this is feasible. The thing is, we are still highly social primates. Much of our social learning takes place in the presence of others. We communicate best when we have the benefit of context clues like eye contact, intonation, facial expression, body gestures, and physical actions. Positive in-person interaction is also something we need to remain mentally healthy (I guess, unless you're a hermit, they seem to be doing ok). I've already seen videos of kids stuck at home just absolutely losing their minds, screaming and crying and throwing themselves around the room over trying to do school on a computer, not being able to see their friends, trying to deal with parents who are also frazzled. The longer it goes on, the more we'll see instances of behavior problems and childhood depression.

 

It's going to come down to striking the best reasonable balance between preventing spread while also permitting humans to behave as normally as possible for their psychological and social health. We can't run around willy-nilly, but we can't keep everyone locked in their houses on Zoom for over a year, either.

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I wonder how children with bad home lives are dealing with this. There were times when my home life wasn’t exactly the best, and school was an escape for me.

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Gucci_Grape
4 minutes ago, Gloomy said:

I wonder how children with bad home lives are dealing with this. There were times when my home life wasn’t exactly the best, and school was an escape for me.

My mom is the principal of an elementary school and this is a huge issue. A lot of children and their families are dealing with severe food scarcity in this situation and a lot of people are stuck with abusive family members with no where to go. It's kind of a nightmare. She found out a family of six was eating plain noodles and water for dinner every night. 

Luckily, she is pushing a lot of donations from teachers and buying food out of her own pocket to help with some of this instability. It's just heartbreaking.

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RoseGoesToYale

I had no idea what kind of a lifeline schools were for some children until quarantines began. According to this op-ed, the main source of reports to child protective services in the US come from educators. Some experts are worried about parents, perhaps otherwise normal during non-pandemic times, snapping under the stress of juggling working from home, childcare and tutoring, chores, and attempting basic self-care.

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