I don't give a shit what the article says or specifically points to but I can tell you this much. I am a dad of a 6 year old. My kid goes to public school in NYC and last year was bad... They did a test at the beginning of this year before the start of the first grade and her results were awful. This is an unprecedented event and everyone is clueless including in education. I don't make a big deal about the test results and it's the reality. Educators are aware but it's not enough, we should be aware too. These kids are more resilient than most people think and we still need to support them. I am lucky I can get paid support for her but not all families have that privilege. So please stop being pedantic about the article and instead maybe focus on how you might create solutions. And please exclude online classes from those solutions. Thank you.
I'd love to see an emotionless cost-benefit analysis of different approaches to handling schools in the pandemic. I suspect the cost of closed schools far exceeds what we intuitively think, since it's not just the educational loss now, it's the cost of future mitigations due to the problems we're causing, and a large cost of lost productivity by parents. How many person-hours of lost productivity is there for each day a classroom is closed? At least a hundred per classroom, more than a thousand for each day a school is closed. There's a lot of things that cost less than a thousand person-hours that could be done to help schools stay open.
I'm not a huge fan of cost-benefit decision processes but they are useful for removing some false dichotomies. Like "we can't afford to do the right thing" when the right thing is actually more cost effective.
By making it about COVID, the affluent readers of the New York Times can pat themselves on the back as if they weren't failing the youth prior to quarantine measures. Of course they were.
I've seen it. Everyone's seen it; even if they've chosen to believe they haven't. The secondary sources have to water it down like this article if they want to talk about it at all. And the primary sources where it's laid bare are a bit too dirty and undomesticated to mention in polite society. Not as if anyone wants to be caught cavorting with primaries at all these days, lest the blue checks turn their back on it (and you, by association).
While the whole world has experienced this pandemic, there is an incredible variety of pandemic experiences out there. Within the United States there are so many variables between states, counties, cities, school districts, and families. A common feature of COVID debate I have noticed is that it often seems like people are not even talking about the same thing.
I live in a state that has had a fairly restrictive approach to COVID - my kids were in remote learning for about a year and we had two periods which could arguably be called "shut downs." But our fortunate circumstances made it so that I do not feel like it was particularly difficult for our children. As a result I have not reacted very strongly to local authorities continuing very cautious policies regarding masks and cohorting in schools. I was initially perplexed by the very strong reactions against the same among my peers, but am coming to understand that, like what this article points out, it has been very difficult for other children.
Early in the pandemic forewarnings were raised about the risks associated with school shutdowns. Drowned out by a cacophony of other opinions, the warnings went unheeded in the US.
Sweden was an outlier in keeping schools open, premised upon the rationale that social and mental wellbeing outweighed the risk covid posed to students[0].
I relocated from NYC to Stockholm early in the pandemic which gave me some interesting insights on comparative covid responses.
The United States is spinning down its governmental duties. The pendulum will swing right again, and that will be the death blow. They will continue to gut public and infrastructure programs. All 3 branches will finally truly be a jobs program for the upper class to suck the blood out of everyone else.
The roads will fall apart. Jails will continue to fill up. The homeless crisis will continue to not fix itself. Everyone but the most wealthy will live like dogs, and then obligingly die when they can't afford the "good" insurance.
This is an impressive rant and makes sense if you ignore the fact that more and more money is being sucked up by the government that seems to be providing less and less in return.
I mean San Francisco has a $1.1B budget for homelessness. That's a contribution of almost $1,300 for every man, woman and child resident of SF. And yet the problem is worse, not better.
Maybe it's not a money problem but the approach that's the issue.
>And what is going to happen? Pass a bill to provide additional support to schools?
Actually, a pediatric emergency was just declared [0]. And both Republicans and Democrats passed a $250 Million bill to provide rapid support for children's mental health. A Dr friend described it as "if I'm seeing a child and I'm concerned he/she is suffering from depression, I can be on the phone with one of the top 5 experts in the country in 30 minutes".
I'm aware, "mental health" for kids isn't the same as "education for kids" - but this is a big step in the right direction
A lot of people on this website, in my experience, do not take this seriously enough, preferring to put on blinders or tell stories about how it’s all for the better we just can’t tell why (thanks invisible hand of the market!).
> Pass a bill to provide additional support to schools?
What do you suggest? More funding? The US has one of the most expensive public education systems per capita. We keep pouring more money into it and it keeps getting worse. I'm in favor of "providing additional support to schools" but it needs to be something other than throwing money at the problem.
I don't know if it's good or bad but I see hear more and more parents wanting to contribute in group for handpicked tutors and teachers and they're not doing it for religious reasons. Problem is, the government doesn't want to give back the taxes or support that (even if they do support private schools).
That is a highly political, opinionated, and pessimistic take. You can just as easily say that the "pendulum swing" hard left has been causing our current issues, and that at least a balancing out could be a natural and needed correction.
I am very thankful that my youngest graduated high school in 2020. The last couple of months were screwed up, but there wasn't much real education lost by then; most seniors pretty much check out after Spring Break anyway.
I really feel for the kids who are younger. The effects of this are going to be with us for decades.
> The effects of this are going to be with us for decades.
Unlikely. The evidence from kids who get sick enough to miss a lot of school is that at worst it takes three years for them to be indistinguishable from those with uninterrupted school attendance. Even unstructured homeschoolers, who have little to no explicit instruction of any kind, are only on average a grade level behind average children[1]. The last historically comparable school closures, for the 1918 flu pandemic, had no detectable long run effects[2].
[1] The Impact of Schooling on Academic Achievement:
Evidence From Homeschooled and Traditionally Schooled Students
Decades? I missed 3 months of 4th grade. The teacher said I should be stuck back in 3rd because 4th grade had moved along so quickly. My mom said no, and put me in the 4th grade class around Christmastime.
I wasn't a day behind. The class had not advanced at all.
But I'm sure the pandemic will be blamed for school unachievement for decades. It's a godsend to the school industrial complex.
I have some bad news for you: if your child is college bound then they are about to go into another environment that has been profoundly damaged by the pandemic: a college campus. Students at my university are angry and depressed about the fact that they're paying thousands of dollars for glorified university of Phoenix. The college social scene is also obviously heavily disrupted, which is probably an underappreciated factor in the development of young people.
If I were of college age and was able, I'd take a gap year or two without any hesitation.
It always surprises that left-leaning politicians and media were the most fervent advocates of school closures, because it has disproportionately affected kids from the poorest backgrounds. What I see around me is that educated couples invested the time to make up for the lack of school education (and were typically home working themselves), so those kids will probably do OK, other kids were left on their own all day.
I think it is more of a relative problem than an absolute problem.
Did your kid go on to college? My two kids did and it's a pretty lousy experience. Classes are mostly online still, cafeterias are take out only, socialization opportunities are mostly gone.
So, is Covid the shock that leads to the education system being reinvented for the better or do school boards just keep bumbling along like before?
Do zero-tolerance policies really work? Why are students falling behind in mathematics compared to the rest of the world? Does overloading of take home work produce better test scores, or does it just consume free time and stress out kids? Are teachers ever going to be paid more? What about later start times for high schools?
I'm not sure I like this article. They seems to overstate what the sources they link to claim.
For example the article says
> Some researchers are skeptical that school closures reduce Covid cases in most instances.
But when you go to the study they link, it says
> Although school closures reduce the number of contacts children have, and may decrease transmission, a study of 12 million adults in the UK found no difference in the risk of death from covid-19 in households with or without children.
There's a big difference between, "You're just as likely to die from COVID if you have children" and "Children going to school doesn't increase the spread of COVID". The study even points out that closing schools "may decrease transmission", but the article completely ignores that.
"For the past two years, large parts of American society have decided harming children was an unavoidable side effect of Covid-19."
This sentence also implied that there had been consensus about what the trade-off is which I don't think everyone would agree with. I definitely know some parents who are afraid if their children returning to badly ventilated classrooms
I think the article does a good job at looking at this as a trade-off. No where in the article do they state outright that there is no change to transmission. The main point is to ask the question "Is avoiding the damage to those that are older worth the damage to those that are younger?"
School closures making it so people in those households are no more likely to die of COVID sounds like school closures are wildly effective. The most relevant comparison is not households with vs without children, but among households with children, outcomes with and without school closures.
I think you're focusing on the wrong sentence in the cited article. It goes on to say:
> International modelling studies which estimate that school closures have a meaningful effect on reducing transmission rates are all confounded by the near simultaneous introduction of multiple interventions (including lockdowns, curfews, closures of bars and restaurants). Moreover, they do not account for indirect effects of school closures which prevent parents from working outside the home. A systematic review of observational studies showed that in those studies with lowest risk of bias, school closures had no discernible effect on SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
The title of the cited article is "Closing schools is not evidence based and harms children", which I think gives a pretty clear picture of the researcher's conclusion. And that in turn matches what the New York Times wrote: "Some researchers are skeptical that school closures reduce Covid cases in most instances."
The part about the under-20-year-old children who fell to gun violence in Chicago raised my eye. Thats a problem but I don't know it's a covid problem, and I'm not certain that people over 18 count as children.
Hm, I found David Leonhardt's summary of that article to be fairly sound – it even opens with "School closures have been implemented internationally with insufficient evidence for their role in minimising covid-19 transmission."
"[A]ccumulating evidence shows that teachers and school staff are not at higher risk of hospital admission or death from covid-19 compared with other workers" quote seems most pertinent. Other quotes that certainly back the paraphrase include "teacher absence decreased in tier 3 regions during the November lockdown despite schools remaining open" and "Teacher absence because of confirmed covid-19 in England was similar in primary and secondary schools in the autumn term."
Finally, the "Transmission" section explicitly casts doubt on studies that did show a reduction in transmission. Overall, "skeptical," as the linked NYT article states, seems dead on.
Were there other sources from the article that you took issue with?
What's the "big difference" that you take issue with?
IMO it's just as good an argument that children and their activities don't affect adults and covid mortality, so by extension opening schools shouldn't be a problem.
Sure, closing schools may "slow the spread", but what does that matter among a population that is ultimately very safe from the effects of covid?
When I was a kid there was a big earthquake where I lived and my life was disrupted for a few weeks. Many decades later I still have latent trauma from that incident.
Children involved in situations like accidents, wars, disasters and abuse need years and sometimes lifelong therapy to deal with it. We are kidding ourselves if we think that the long list of behavioral changes we are starting to see in kids is simply attributed to keeping them at home, and when school reopens they will magically get back to normal. They have been exposed to non-stop disruption, illness, death and uncertainty for two years now.
Whether the covid pandemic goes away or not, a mental health one is upon us soon.
It seems like this is a case where science doesn't tell the whole story. The pro-science stance is very numbers-focused, but ignores hard-to-quantify things that really do matter.
People see their kids suffering. Masks do have a cost. Millions of years of evolution say that facial expressions are really important, especially for adolescents. Fear has a cost. And quality of life matters.
Everyone knows this. Even the most pro-lockdown politicians are seen enjoying ordinary life among people. The ones who can't escape are the kids, because the adults tell them what to do 24/7 and punish them instantly when out of compliance.
It doesn't help that we label people who happen to see the real costs to children as some kind of science deniers. You don't have to deny science to realize that other things also matter.
Are there any teachers who can really talk about solutions to the problems covid presents? Rather seriously, of what I can find anecdotally online (as I know no teachers IRL) that even trying to have in-person classes haven't really helped, because parents pull their kids out of class or a significant chunk misses school due to being out sick/quarantine and now the entire lesson plan is screwed up.
In 30 years these kids will be running the world. I can only hope they'll understand why this happened to them, so the next generation will be a bit wiser.
Not in the US but I recently helped my niece in math (7th grade) remotely since they now do fractions and also negative numbers. When I tested if she could calculate a random sum with unequal denominators she tried to add them up like someone who never saw fractions before. Also the school teaching sounds like chaos, classes are split and they apparently didn't even have an opportunity to go through the test in class together. My sister is worried since her grades dropped this year and considers putting her into another school because other subjects aren't great either. Luckily she's now going to in-person tutoring.
You can't have a years-long pandemic without consequences, good and bad.
My state of Texas has had schools open almost all of this time--and we're not doing better than the other states.
Where are all the folks in the United States who say that parents are the best teachers of their children, that home-schooling should rule the day, that the best care comes from families? That would imply that children would be better than ever, right? They will never believe that it takes a village.
You have your groups backwards. Those of us who homeschool (or whose children attend small, alternative private schools) understand fully that it takes a village. That's why we went to great pains to keep that village active, pandemic or no pandemic. Our specific community has accepted the additional risk to us adults in order to keep some level of normalcy for our children.
This article is about the other kids. The kindergartners who haven't seen a teacher's face in 24 months. The grade schoolers forced to eat outside in the cold. The high schoolers who unofficially "dropped out" when their schools closed and will never return to receive their diploma. Those kids have suffered greatly in the name of reducing risk to adults.
I'm not in the US, but the home-schooling comparison is not fair from my Australian experience of it.
In home schooling a parent teaches the kids, full time, with no pressure from their day job.
In pandemic home schooling, the parent probably is trying to do a job at the same time (or do a shift to suit or something?) is stressed out, and is not setting the curriculum - instead the teacher is setting the day's agenda via a zoom call or two, and the kids have to follow the exercises after. Some of these exercises may not make sense to the parents.
The parents don't get any advance "teachers notes" or inkling of what is coming, the exercises appear and if the kid is stuck you need to figure out how to help them.
In summary pandemic remote schooling is not home schooling for 2 reasons. One is the parents probably have their main job to do. Two is the parents are not teaching, they are at best a teachers assistant who is badly prepped.
Parents aren't home-schooling... they're trying to keep working full-time while their kids sit on the computer and try to learn over zoom. There's no comparison.
Pandemic homeschooling is definitely not homeschooling at its best.
Homeschooling by choice has a great academic record with students doing well on standardized exams and in college. Kids who were sent home for “virtual school” on the other hand have a lot of learning loss on average.
Especially when parents still had to work and just put their kid in front of a TV, that’s not home schooling.
I have two kids just out of college, and they already have the attitude that they're defeated, the world is out to get them, if everyone older would just die, why can't we buy a new car for $4000 or a house for $20K?
I personally know healthy people not in the "old" age groups who have permanent nerve damage from mild cases of unvaccinated (pre-vaccine) Covid. We have known from the beginning that Covid sometimes causes nerve and/or brain damage (sensory loss) that may be permanent. As I am not a virologist any more than the author of this piece, I am not comfortable making blanket pronouncements like this from TFA:
> For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults.
There is already precedent for other acute respiratory infections (Scarlet Fever, influenza) causing cardiac damage that persists for decades. I don't understand how so many people are willing to make conclusions about long-term complications from pediatric Covid in the absence of long-term studies.
I also don't understand how one could write about tradeoffs for children without mentioning the growing ranks of Covid orphans, some of whom will be adrift in our anemic social services system for the coming decades. Besides that, losing a parent is one of the most traumatic events a child can experience. Discounting to zero that trauma given the scale of death in American is not doing the reader a service.
I'm in the Bay Area and it'll be coming up on 2 years soon of what basically amounts to a social shut down.
-- Many social groups are just not getting together anymore, including most of mine.
-- Concerts, sporting events, parties of most sizes, crowded bars/clubs just seem off the table at this point.
-- Masks for the majority of it, which makes gym going and working out, especially cardio, uncomfortable enough to not bother.
-- It's been so long that I've now never met, in person, anyone on my team at work.
Like yeah, technically we're not shut down. Technically you can do most things with masks/vaxxes. But for a lot of us things are still essentially shut down. Especially the social aspects.
At what point can we give up? If at 4 years in with Variant #3242, are we still going to be doing what we're doing now? There's zero sign that this thing is going to stop any time soon.
Except that real solutions never seem to be on the table.
For example, how about atomizing school into pods of smaller numbers of students with teachers scattered around the district instead of 30+ students per teacher with 1000+ students crammed into a building or campus? This would be especially effective for the youngest students. And a "Covid Outbreak" would shut down less than a dozen students and a teacher for a week or two and be done with it.
But, you see, that would take money. And everybody likes to bitch about education but nobody wants to spend actual cash.
And, by the way, if you think its been bad on kids, the teachers have had it bad, too. Unlike the kids, the teachers had a much higher probability of dying. And they get the joy of being on the frontlines with the anti-vax idiots. Any teachers I know of who can exit have been running for the doors.
[+] [-] testingathing|4 years ago|reply
https://archive.is/6F3Fp
[+] [-] ilteris|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ianbicking|4 years ago|reply
I'm not a huge fan of cost-benefit decision processes but they are useful for removing some false dichotomies. Like "we can't afford to do the right thing" when the right thing is actually more cost effective.
[+] [-] dogleash|4 years ago|reply
By making it about COVID, the affluent readers of the New York Times can pat themselves on the back as if they weren't failing the youth prior to quarantine measures. Of course they were.
I've seen it. Everyone's seen it; even if they've chosen to believe they haven't. The secondary sources have to water it down like this article if they want to talk about it at all. And the primary sources where it's laid bare are a bit too dirty and undomesticated to mention in polite society. Not as if anyone wants to be caught cavorting with primaries at all these days, lest the blue checks turn their back on it (and you, by association).
[+] [-] Ergo19|4 years ago|reply
I live in a state that has had a fairly restrictive approach to COVID - my kids were in remote learning for about a year and we had two periods which could arguably be called "shut downs." But our fortunate circumstances made it so that I do not feel like it was particularly difficult for our children. As a result I have not reacted very strongly to local authorities continuing very cautious policies regarding masks and cohorting in schools. I was initially perplexed by the very strong reactions against the same among my peers, but am coming to understand that, like what this article points out, it has been very difficult for other children.
[+] [-] soderfoo|4 years ago|reply
Sweden was an outlier in keeping schools open, premised upon the rationale that social and mental wellbeing outweighed the risk covid posed to students[0].
I relocated from NYC to Stockholm early in the pandemic which gave me some interesting insights on comparative covid responses.
[0] https://www.gu.se/en/news/only-in-sweden-primary-school-rema...
[+] [-] honkycat|4 years ago|reply
Hell, Anything? No. Nothing is ever done. Nothing ever happens except decay.
The United States is spinning down its governmental duties. The pendulum will swing right again, and that will be the death blow. They will continue to gut public and infrastructure programs. All 3 branches will finally truly be a jobs program for the upper class to suck the blood out of everyone else.
The roads will fall apart. Jails will continue to fill up. The homeless crisis will continue to not fix itself. Everyone but the most wealthy will live like dogs, and then obligingly die when they can't afford the "good" insurance.
[+] [-] refurb|4 years ago|reply
I mean San Francisco has a $1.1B budget for homelessness. That's a contribution of almost $1,300 for every man, woman and child resident of SF. And yet the problem is worse, not better.
Maybe it's not a money problem but the approach that's the issue.
[+] [-] geoduck14|4 years ago|reply
Actually, a pediatric emergency was just declared [0]. And both Republicans and Democrats passed a $250 Million bill to provide rapid support for children's mental health. A Dr friend described it as "if I'm seeing a child and I'm concerned he/she is suffering from depression, I can be on the phone with one of the top 5 experts in the country in 30 minutes".
I'm aware, "mental health" for kids isn't the same as "education for kids" - but this is a big step in the right direction
[0]https://www.aacap.org/AACAP/zLatest_News/Pediatricians_CAPs_...
[+] [-] robotburrito|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] philosopher1234|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CivBase|4 years ago|reply
What do you suggest? More funding? The US has one of the most expensive public education systems per capita. We keep pouring more money into it and it keeps getting worse. I'm in favor of "providing additional support to schools" but it needs to be something other than throwing money at the problem.
[+] [-] TeeMassive|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucaspm98|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] gromitss|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] throwoutway|4 years ago|reply
> Everyone but the most wealthy will live like dogs
These two points confict. Maybe the left should stop trying to raise the SALT tax deductions that the right reduced?
https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2021/nov/22/democr...
And I say this as someone that would benefit from raising the SALT taxes. It is wrong for them to try to raise it
[+] [-] throwawayboise|4 years ago|reply
I really feel for the kids who are younger. The effects of this are going to be with us for decades.
[+] [-] barry-cotter|4 years ago|reply
Unlikely. The evidence from kids who get sick enough to miss a lot of school is that at worst it takes three years for them to be indistinguishable from those with uninterrupted school attendance. Even unstructured homeschoolers, who have little to no explicit instruction of any kind, are only on average a grade level behind average children[1]. The last historically comparable school closures, for the 1918 flu pandemic, had no detectable long run effects[2].
[1] The Impact of Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence From Homeschooled and Traditionally Schooled Students
http://zoleerjemeer.nl/files/1313/9109/4391/The_Impact_of_Sc...
[2]School Closures During the 1918 Flu Pandemic https://www.nber.org/papers/w28246
[+] [-] WalterBright|4 years ago|reply
I wasn't a day behind. The class had not advanced at all.
But I'm sure the pandemic will be blamed for school unachievement for decades. It's a godsend to the school industrial complex.
[+] [-] tschwimmer|4 years ago|reply
If I were of college age and was able, I'd take a gap year or two without any hesitation.
[+] [-] cm2187|4 years ago|reply
I think it is more of a relative problem than an absolute problem.
[+] [-] criddell|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] halostatue|4 years ago|reply
Children are resilient. What is _hurting_ them is not the school closures, but the panic and uncertainty that some people have put around this.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] walshemj|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] swayvil|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] monkeybutton|4 years ago|reply
Do zero-tolerance policies really work? Why are students falling behind in mathematics compared to the rest of the world? Does overloading of take home work produce better test scores, or does it just consume free time and stress out kids? Are teachers ever going to be paid more? What about later start times for high schools?
There's so many things that can be questioned.
[+] [-] superfrank|4 years ago|reply
For example the article says
> Some researchers are skeptical that school closures reduce Covid cases in most instances.
But when you go to the study they link, it says
> Although school closures reduce the number of contacts children have, and may decrease transmission, a study of 12 million adults in the UK found no difference in the risk of death from covid-19 in households with or without children.
There's a big difference between, "You're just as likely to die from COVID if you have children" and "Children going to school doesn't increase the spread of COVID". The study even points out that closing schools "may decrease transmission", but the article completely ignores that.
[+] [-] ajmurmann|4 years ago|reply
This sentence also implied that there had been consensus about what the trade-off is which I don't think everyone would agree with. I definitely know some parents who are afraid if their children returning to badly ventilated classrooms
[+] [-] animal_spirits|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] delecti|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Wowfunhappy|4 years ago|reply
> International modelling studies which estimate that school closures have a meaningful effect on reducing transmission rates are all confounded by the near simultaneous introduction of multiple interventions (including lockdowns, curfews, closures of bars and restaurants). Moreover, they do not account for indirect effects of school closures which prevent parents from working outside the home. A systematic review of observational studies showed that in those studies with lowest risk of bias, school closures had no discernible effect on SARS-CoV-2 transmission.
The title of the cited article is "Closing schools is not evidence based and harms children", which I think gives a pretty clear picture of the researcher's conclusion. And that in turn matches what the New York Times wrote: "Some researchers are skeptical that school closures reduce Covid cases in most instances."
[+] [-] droopyEyelids|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lelandfe|4 years ago|reply
"[A]ccumulating evidence shows that teachers and school staff are not at higher risk of hospital admission or death from covid-19 compared with other workers" quote seems most pertinent. Other quotes that certainly back the paraphrase include "teacher absence decreased in tier 3 regions during the November lockdown despite schools remaining open" and "Teacher absence because of confirmed covid-19 in England was similar in primary and secondary schools in the autumn term."
Finally, the "Transmission" section explicitly casts doubt on studies that did show a reduction in transmission. Overall, "skeptical," as the linked NYT article states, seems dead on.
Were there other sources from the article that you took issue with?
[+] [-] disambiguation|4 years ago|reply
IMO it's just as good an argument that children and their activities don't affect adults and covid mortality, so by extension opening schools shouldn't be a problem.
Sure, closing schools may "slow the spread", but what does that matter among a population that is ultimately very safe from the effects of covid?
[+] [-] paxys|4 years ago|reply
Children involved in situations like accidents, wars, disasters and abuse need years and sometimes lifelong therapy to deal with it. We are kidding ourselves if we think that the long list of behavioral changes we are starting to see in kids is simply attributed to keeping them at home, and when school reopens they will magically get back to normal. They have been exposed to non-stop disruption, illness, death and uncertainty for two years now.
Whether the covid pandemic goes away or not, a mental health one is upon us soon.
[+] [-] chmod600|4 years ago|reply
People see their kids suffering. Masks do have a cost. Millions of years of evolution say that facial expressions are really important, especially for adolescents. Fear has a cost. And quality of life matters.
Everyone knows this. Even the most pro-lockdown politicians are seen enjoying ordinary life among people. The ones who can't escape are the kids, because the adults tell them what to do 24/7 and punish them instantly when out of compliance.
It doesn't help that we label people who happen to see the real costs to children as some kind of science deniers. You don't have to deny science to realize that other things also matter.
[Edited for clarity.]
[+] [-] babyblueblanket|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] stathibus|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] throwmath|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] librarianscott|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sanedigital|4 years ago|reply
This article is about the other kids. The kindergartners who haven't seen a teacher's face in 24 months. The grade schoolers forced to eat outside in the cold. The high schoolers who unofficially "dropped out" when their schools closed and will never return to receive their diploma. Those kids have suffered greatly in the name of reducing risk to adults.
[+] [-] quickthrower2|4 years ago|reply
In home schooling a parent teaches the kids, full time, with no pressure from their day job.
In pandemic home schooling, the parent probably is trying to do a job at the same time (or do a shift to suit or something?) is stressed out, and is not setting the curriculum - instead the teacher is setting the day's agenda via a zoom call or two, and the kids have to follow the exercises after. Some of these exercises may not make sense to the parents.
The parents don't get any advance "teachers notes" or inkling of what is coming, the exercises appear and if the kid is stuck you need to figure out how to help them.
In summary pandemic remote schooling is not home schooling for 2 reasons. One is the parents probably have their main job to do. Two is the parents are not teaching, they are at best a teachers assistant who is badly prepped.
[+] [-] titanomachy|4 years ago|reply
[+] [-] javagram|4 years ago|reply
Homeschooling by choice has a great academic record with students doing well on standardized exams and in college. Kids who were sent home for “virtual school” on the other hand have a lot of learning loss on average.
Especially when parents still had to work and just put their kid in front of a TV, that’s not home schooling.
[+] [-] unknown|4 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] smm11|4 years ago|reply
I have two kids just out of college, and they already have the attitude that they're defeated, the world is out to get them, if everyone older would just die, why can't we buy a new car for $4000 or a house for $20K?
[+] [-] runako|4 years ago|reply
> For the past two years, Americans have accepted more harm to children in exchange for less harm to adults.
There is already precedent for other acute respiratory infections (Scarlet Fever, influenza) causing cardiac damage that persists for decades. I don't understand how so many people are willing to make conclusions about long-term complications from pediatric Covid in the absence of long-term studies.
I also don't understand how one could write about tradeoffs for children without mentioning the growing ranks of Covid orphans, some of whom will be adrift in our anemic social services system for the coming decades. Besides that, losing a parent is one of the most traumatic events a child can experience. Discounting to zero that trauma given the scale of death in American is not doing the reader a service.
[+] [-] yupper32|4 years ago|reply
I'm in the Bay Area and it'll be coming up on 2 years soon of what basically amounts to a social shut down.
-- Many social groups are just not getting together anymore, including most of mine.
-- Concerts, sporting events, parties of most sizes, crowded bars/clubs just seem off the table at this point.
-- Masks for the majority of it, which makes gym going and working out, especially cardio, uncomfortable enough to not bother.
-- It's been so long that I've now never met, in person, anyone on my team at work.
Like yeah, technically we're not shut down. Technically you can do most things with masks/vaxxes. But for a lot of us things are still essentially shut down. Especially the social aspects.
At what point can we give up? If at 4 years in with Variant #3242, are we still going to be doing what we're doing now? There's zero sign that this thing is going to stop any time soon.
[+] [-] bsder|4 years ago|reply
For example, how about atomizing school into pods of smaller numbers of students with teachers scattered around the district instead of 30+ students per teacher with 1000+ students crammed into a building or campus? This would be especially effective for the youngest students. And a "Covid Outbreak" would shut down less than a dozen students and a teacher for a week or two and be done with it.
But, you see, that would take money. And everybody likes to bitch about education but nobody wants to spend actual cash.
And, by the way, if you think its been bad on kids, the teachers have had it bad, too. Unlike the kids, the teachers had a much higher probability of dying. And they get the joy of being on the frontlines with the anti-vax idiots. Any teachers I know of who can exit have been running for the doors.