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Amazing that the author can expend so many words without an honest discussion of the drawbacks of leaving schools closed and children at home. School closures

Amazing that the author can expend so many words without an honest discussion of the drawbacks of leaving schools closed and children at home. School closures are having a disproportionately negative impact of poor and middle class families, whose parents can’t work from home. These families relied on schools to not only teach but to supervise and feed children. Both Cuomo and POTUS agree on this, which tells me there’s more to the story than what the author is letting on.

inetknght 6y ago
> School closures are having a disproportionately negative impact of poor and middle class families, whose parents can’t work from home. Using schools for daycare facilities isn't an honest discussion of the drawbacks of leaving schools closed either.
- dr_dshiv 6y ago
  Why not? What do you suggest people do with their kids, if they need to work and don't have resources for private babysitting/tutoring?
  - ghaff 6y ago
    I know "schools aren't daycare" is one of the talking points for a number of the unions in particular. But it sort of is (among other things). The alternative is for the government to have someone else provide the childcare--which doesn't really change the problem. Or parents have to figure things out on their own however they can.
    - inetknght 6y ago
      > The alternative is for the government to have someone else provide the childcare Another alternative is to pay workers a fair living wage sufficient for everyone to afford private care.
      - dr_dshiv 6y ago
        How would that be different from teachers providing child care?
- dabbledash 6y ago
  Under normal circumstances are people supposed to keep a baby sitter on call at all times just in case society is suddenly upended and schools go away? If kids are usually in school all day, parents are going to build their schedules around that. It would be pretty silly to do otherwise.
- RHSeeger 6y ago
  Like it or not, our society has been set up (for many years now) such that children attend school during the days. Implying that parents are the bad guys and "treating schools as daycare" is disingenuous and insulting. Parents, and society as a whole, make long term, life plans around the fact that children will be in school; not because it's a daycare, but because it's important and required. Changing that (cancelling school) impacts life in a significant, financial way; the kind of way that negatively effects both parents and children. We see the same type of thing when schools suddenly change starting times to be later; work schedules need to change and it's very stressful to everyone; people lose jobs over it. This is like that, but orders of magnitude more impactful.
redleggedfrog 6y ago
Read the article. It's about making the bad less bad and the opportunity we missed to do so. Everyone knows the parameters here, don't need the slant.
gumby 6y ago
The very second paragraph raisins this issue, followed by an explanation of why this article is about a specific sub problem: > ... Indeed, many people who care deeply about vulnerable populations in ways that he has never shown are desperate to open schools. Children can be less safe at home than they are at school; families can face a crisis if a parent or guardian (often a mother) has to stay with a child rather than go to work. > But as Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, put it last week, when she announced that all school instruction in her city will be remote at least until November, we have now moved to “a very different place in the arc of the pandemic.”...
- ed25519FUUU 6y ago
  Thats an extremely vague statement. Why are children unsafe? What is the crisis that families face? That statement doesn’t address at all the reasons given for opening schools. It’s like saying “War is good, but sometimes war makes people unsafe”.
  - gumby 6y ago
    The point was she said “I’m going to focus on the importance of issue X, bough TBF there are other legitimate factors pushing the other way such as Y and Z. But they aren’t he topic of this essay.” I was responding to a complaint that these other positions weren’t discussed with the concomitant implication that the author was lazy and/or biased. To put it another way: I could write an essay on progress in cleaner burning car engines; if I did I know I would say something like, “of course the real fix is electric, hydrogen perhaps, or some other less-polluting source, but for now this is the important problem at hand”. I’d be annoyed if someone then complained, “but we shouldn’t have emissions at all”

inetknght 6y ago

> School closures are having a disproportionately negative impact of poor and middle class families, whose parents can’t work from home. Using schools for daycare facilities isn't an honest discussion of the drawbacks of leaving schools closed either.

dr_dshiv 6y ago
Why not? What do you suggest people do with their kids, if they need to work and don't have resources for private babysitting/tutoring?
- ghaff 6y ago
  I know "schools aren't daycare" is one of the talking points for a number of the unions in particular. But it sort of is (among other things). The alternative is for the government to have someone else provide the childcare--which doesn't really change the problem. Or parents have to figure things out on their own however they can.
  - inetknght 6y ago
    > The alternative is for the government to have someone else provide the childcare Another alternative is to pay workers a fair living wage sufficient for everyone to afford private care.
    - dr_dshiv 6y ago
      How would that be different from teachers providing child care?
dabbledash 6y ago
Under normal circumstances are people supposed to keep a baby sitter on call at all times just in case society is suddenly upended and schools go away? If kids are usually in school all day, parents are going to build their schedules around that. It would be pretty silly to do otherwise.
RHSeeger 6y ago
Like it or not, our society has been set up (for many years now) such that children attend school during the days. Implying that parents are the bad guys and "treating schools as daycare" is disingenuous and insulting. Parents, and society as a whole, make long term, life plans around the fact that children will be in school; not because it's a daycare, but because it's important and required. Changing that (cancelling school) impacts life in a significant, financial way; the kind of way that negatively effects both parents and children. We see the same type of thing when schools suddenly change starting times to be later; work schedules need to change and it's very stressful to everyone; people lose jobs over it. This is like that, but orders of magnitude more impactful.

redleggedfrog 6y ago

Read the article. It's about making the bad less bad and the opportunity we missed to do so. Everyone knows the parameters here, don't need the slant.

gumby 6y ago

The very second paragraph raisins this issue, followed by an explanation of why this article is about a specific sub problem: > ... Indeed, many people who care deeply about vulnerable populations in ways that he has never shown are desperate to open schools. Children can be less safe at home than they are at school; families can face a crisis if a parent or guardian (often a mother) has to stay with a child rather than go to work. > But as Lori Lightfoot, the mayor of Chicago, put it last week, when she announced that all school instruction in her city will be remote at least until November, we have now moved to “a very different place in the arc of the pandemic.”...

ed25519FUUU 6y ago
Thats an extremely vague statement. Why are children unsafe? What is the crisis that families face? That statement doesn’t address at all the reasons given for opening schools. It’s like saying “War is good, but sometimes war makes people unsafe”.
- gumby 6y ago
  The point was she said “I’m going to focus on the importance of issue X, bough TBF there are other legitimate factors pushing the other way such as Y and Z. But they aren’t he topic of this essay.” I was responding to a complaint that these other positions weren’t discussed with the concomitant implication that the author was lazy and/or biased. To put it another way: I could write an essay on progress in cleaner burning car engines; if I did I know I would say something like, “of course the real fix is electric, hydrogen perhaps, or some other less-polluting source, but for now this is the important problem at hand”. I’d be annoyed if someone then complained, “but we shouldn’t have emissions at all”