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This drives me insane. Somehow the grocery store worker and delivery driver are essential, but a teacher is not? As if educating children is not one of the most

This drives me insane. Somehow the grocery store worker and delivery driver are essential, but a teacher is not? As if educating children is not one of the most important tasks on the planet. I’m sorry but a 7 year old is not focusing on Zoom for 6 hours nor getting socialization. The evidence says opening schools is safe. Why the teachers unions have prevented reopening schools en masse is criminal. This audio is damning and shows the attitude towards parents.

rovr138 6y ago
My issue is that we shouldn't expect a 7 year old to focus constantly for 6 hours on anything.
- bluefirebrand 6y ago
  There are some kids who can, but the ones who can't are the ones who ruin it for all the others.
  - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
    Maybe it's the other way around.
    - bluefirebrand 6y ago
      I don't think "The kids who do not want to be at school ruin it for the kids who do want to be at school" is an unreasonable take. People who don't want to be at things ruin those things for people who do want to be there in every cross section of society.
      - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
        But maybe the fact that some kids can pay attention for 6 hours has made us as a society expect that kids should be able to pay attention for 6 hours and that the ones who can't are somehow deficient. Perhaps this is to everyone's detriment and the optimal solution for education for everyone is not the classroom model.
        bluefirebrand 6y ago
        I think your stance is completely faulty. Children aren't sent to 6-8 hours of school a day because it was discovered that some subset of them liked it and we decided to just implement it across the board. We decided as a society that not only is education valuable for people, it's a human right. So we, as a society, have failed if we fail to provide an education for our children. Many children don't like going to school. Some subset of children wind up acting out in a ton of different ways, but often it is disruptive to classes and wastes a ton of time. Their actions have a direct negative impact on the children who actually want to attend classes and learn. But education is the right of everyone, even children who actively resist school, so we don't remove them. I get the point you're trying to make, that maybe our children would benefit more from just being allowed to be children, to be rowdy and play with friends, have freedom and activity instead of hours of lessons per day sitting in a chair. I get that. I even agree with it to a point. But it's extremely asinine to suggest that somehow this is the fault of the well behaved kids or the kids who genuinely love school.
        i_haz_rabies 6y ago
        I'm not saying it's their fault, I'm saying that their ability to participate fully may have led educators to think that their peers who cannot do so are deficient, rather than that the education process itself could be improved so everyone can fully participate in it.
      - kinghtown 6y ago
        I work in education. These passive aggressive kids who try to dismantle the class need to be removed from good students. People online demand that teachers be like part superhero, part hilarious talk show host they don’t realize how exhausting it is to hold back 20-30 kids day after day for that one kid or group who hate going to school and only want to ruin the day for everyone else. We can all admit that there are some toxic people at the office yet to suggest as much with children is heavily frowned upon. I now have a live and let live approach to these specific kids. They can waste time, zone out, even chat with their buddies but as soon as they cross the line into bothering someone else then I must intervene. It’s really difficult to make everyone happy. It’s so wild to me how some kids will love me while others will view me as like some kind of antagonist in a Charles Dickens story no matter how much I try to win them over. They just don’t want to be there.
  - Bakary 6y ago
    We'll have to confront the nature of our education system pretty soon anyway since automation will probably destabilize the way society parcels out work and keeps people busy Some kids are diligent and eager to learn, but that doesn't mean keeping them on often absurd tasks or tasks with few applications in the real world is meaningful. Spending a decade optimizing for specific exams for specific institutions whose degrees are undergoing inflation at a rapid pace doesn't seem very efficient, but at least it's a compromise between various actors with various needs (parents needing a break, a lack of resources for each child, companies needing a quick if imperfect way to evaluate candidates, young people wanting an environment with people their own age etc.) Unfortunately, this compromise is being torn asunder by systemic forces that keep parts of it in place and make other parts increasingly unworkable. I don't have a solution in mind right now but I don't think it's as simple as just dumber kids ruining it, although it obviously is a factor in what makes schools unpleasant
    - bluefirebrand 6y ago
      This is a really thoughtful examination of the problems with contemporary public schooling, thank you for posting it. I do want to add that it's not necessary "dumb" kids who are ruining it. Just kids who don't want to be there, either because they don't want to participate or because they are bored, or because they aren't capable of sitting quietly for hours and hours, or they'd rather do something else, or whatever.
      - Bakary 6y ago
        Younger me would have paradoxically been in both the diligent and alienated category. The older I get, the more I realize that the openly rambunctious kids I went to school with probably had the right idea all along. They were experiencing an intuitive and deeply human reaction to what is essentially a wasteful cargo-culting process where grades and other such surrogate activities are mistaken for actions that directly contribute to life. It's a classic case of confusing ease of control and predictability for actual value. To some extent there is real value in the work, in that its get your foot through the door which in turns gets your foot in a series of potentially more pleasant doors down the the line. But the process is so utterly inefficient in terms of the effort and opportunity cost expended compared to what a job actually requires in the real world. I hope I'm not coming across as bitter, because I am in fact quite optimistic. We have the technological means to spread education far more easily. Bright students are faced with a more competitive world but also have the tools to make progress on just about anything. With ML, it might even be possible to offer personalized courses and the attention that every individual kid or young adult might need.
- jokethrowaway 6y ago
  Most adults can't do that
  - MattGaiser 6y ago
    Slack won't let me.
    - yholio 6y ago
      Slack is the job you should focus on.
alistairSH 6y ago
The evidence says opening schools is safe. If and only if proper precautions are taken. Given the political climate in many GOP-led states, implementation of those precautions is not a given.
- dominotw 6y ago
  I am in the bluest of blue states. Our schools are closed. Why would schools be closed here for whats going on in alaska. I Don't understand logic behind your comment.
  - rossdavidh 6y ago
    Alaska has pretty good results right now: https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/covid_stuff/Alaska.html https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/covid_stu... Of course, Alaska also leads among all states in the percentage of its population vaccinated, but it's still much less than half so if their policies regarding covid-19 were egregiously bad, I think we would see it in their results by now.
    - dominotw 6y ago
      Sorry I wasn't implying Alaska is doing poorly. Its just the first "GOP lead state" that came to mind. Its great that they are doing good. I was trying to make a point that how what is going in "GOP lead states" is relevant to my school.
  - scyAnts0 6y ago
    Numbers are going down because people aren’t clustering. Until vaccination rates hit a tipping point, putting people back together now will create a spike. I do not really get the concern? So it takes longer for Timmy or Alice to get to multiplication?
- geoduck14 6y ago
  Hey, now. I'm in Texas. Our schools are open, and we are taking precautions.
ugexe 6y ago
Saying “the evidence” without supplying any evidence isn’t going to further your point
- dominotw 6y ago
  How though? Isn't onus on the ones making the original claim. Original claim was, "schools need to be shut down because they will increase covid spread" Person making the claim needs to comeup with "the evidence" not the other way around.
  - solosoyokaze 6y ago
    Anyone with children will tell you that school is a major disease vector. It's common sense and basic medical knowledge. Putting a bunch of people together spreads disease, especially when they're a bunch of children with dubious hygiene habits.
    - dominotw 6y ago
      > It's common sense So when should schools be opened according to this?
      - solosoyokaze 6y ago
        When children can get vaccinated.
        dominotw 6y ago
        and presumably teachers and staff too. Hope this administration follows common sense.
        solosoyokaze 6y ago
        I agree, everyone should get vaccinated before they get into large groups. EDIT: would love to know why anyone would downvote this. Seems uncontroversial to people who aren't anti-vax.
ajford 6y ago
Given the number of contact tracing event's I've had since my kids school opened (with only about 30-50% in person attendance), I strongly disagree with 'safe'. I've had to quarantine my oldest since his younger brother is at risk (asthma), and the toll it took on him was insane. We talked with him constantly over voice and video calls, he interacted with his brother over Amazon Echo's drop-in feature and online games, and we tried to do everything we could to make it as 'fun' as we could. He still has nightmares about being locked away from his brother, or that he got his brother really sick. Why are we pushing for widely opening schools when even half-occupancy is dangerous enough to cause this kind of trauma to a child? I'm sure I'm gonna get asked why they're in person, but the reasons venture to more personal than I care to post, but in short, they're both in Spec. Ed and weren't coping with virtual learning at all, even after many months of trying to figure it out. Combine that with two working parents and you have a recipe for virtual schooling (or zoom school as my kids call it). I say we shouldn't open schools until we can vaccinate school staff. Preferably also students, but I realize that since most kids are in low-risk groups that's likely far off. Perhaps for high-risk students with compromised respiratory systems.
- djrogers 6y ago
  I think children such as yours should be the exception to the rule for open, in-person schooling right now. Your story, while tragic, perfectly makes the point that most families don't deal with the issues that you're facing, yet many don't have the option to send their depressed, underperforming, and stir-crazy kids to school.
fasteddie31003 6y ago
School might not be 100% Covid safe, but the alternative of kids reducing their parents output and losing out on social and educational skills is worse that Covid. It's the same ethics struggle I see over and over again with Covid. Deontological: It is a little more dangerous, just shut it down. Consequential: We need to worry about the big picture and the treatment is worse than if we did nothing.
- neogodless 6y ago
  > is worse that Covid Statements like these are always interesting to me. Covid has killed half a million Americans in under a year. During that year, many parents are operating at reduced productivity, and their children are likely getting less out of their public education than usual. How do you compare these two statements to clarify that one is worse than the other? Obviously a known death toll is an easily identifiable bad thing. The other half of the equation is harder to quantify. Some benefits include children being exposed to new forms of large group virtual communication. They are likely not well-adapted to them at this point - maturity and focus and motivation are all likely lacking, especially for rushed, poorly designed virtual systems. Then again, perhaps there will be a rubber band effect of refreshed engagement as children return to physical education in the year ahead.
neogodless 6y ago
There does seem to be evidence that in-person schooling is not a substantial contributor to community transmission[0]. This link is just the first one for Google search results for query "evidence on opening schools." That being said, I don't think you're expressing yourself well, or communicating with others well. What we saw in 2020 was a lot of lightly tested theories about what would and would not work, some being encouraged only to later be found to be incorrect. And the 2020 winter has been a complete flood of community transmission. So one approach might be to take a list of available actions to reduce transmission where possible, and hopefully cumulatively make a big difference, even if each action contributes a small amount. We also know that educators are among Phase 1b for vaccine qualification, so we should be able to imagine that having a largely vaccinated population of teachers should improve both safety of opening schools physically, as well as the optics of doing so without putting our teachers at risk. [0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775875 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775875
goatinaboat 6y ago
As if educating children is not one of the most important tasks on the planet. Of course educating children is important but the current method of doing so is not the only possible one, and arguably prioritises the lifestyle of so-called teachers over that of children, parents, and taxpayers in general. What if the lesson of COVID is that MOOCs are actually better? Or homeschooling is actually better? Why should we go on paying teachers who, despite their bleating, are actually very well compensated for what they do (when they bother to show up).

rovr138 6y ago

My issue is that we shouldn't expect a 7 year old to focus constantly for 6 hours on anything.

bluefirebrand 6y ago
There are some kids who can, but the ones who can't are the ones who ruin it for all the others.
- i_haz_rabies 6y ago
  Maybe it's the other way around.
  - bluefirebrand 6y ago
    I don't think "The kids who do not want to be at school ruin it for the kids who do want to be at school" is an unreasonable take. People who don't want to be at things ruin those things for people who do want to be there in every cross section of society.
    - i_haz_rabies 6y ago
      But maybe the fact that some kids can pay attention for 6 hours has made us as a society expect that kids should be able to pay attention for 6 hours and that the ones who can't are somehow deficient. Perhaps this is to everyone's detriment and the optimal solution for education for everyone is not the classroom model.
      - bluefirebrand 6y ago
        I think your stance is completely faulty. Children aren't sent to 6-8 hours of school a day because it was discovered that some subset of them liked it and we decided to just implement it across the board. We decided as a society that not only is education valuable for people, it's a human right. So we, as a society, have failed if we fail to provide an education for our children. Many children don't like going to school. Some subset of children wind up acting out in a ton of different ways, but often it is disruptive to classes and wastes a ton of time. Their actions have a direct negative impact on the children who actually want to attend classes and learn. But education is the right of everyone, even children who actively resist school, so we don't remove them. I get the point you're trying to make, that maybe our children would benefit more from just being allowed to be children, to be rowdy and play with friends, have freedom and activity instead of hours of lessons per day sitting in a chair. I get that. I even agree with it to a point. But it's extremely asinine to suggest that somehow this is the fault of the well behaved kids or the kids who genuinely love school.
        i_haz_rabies 6y ago
        I'm not saying it's their fault, I'm saying that their ability to participate fully may have led educators to think that their peers who cannot do so are deficient, rather than that the education process itself could be improved so everyone can fully participate in it.
    - kinghtown 6y ago
      I work in education. These passive aggressive kids who try to dismantle the class need to be removed from good students. People online demand that teachers be like part superhero, part hilarious talk show host they don’t realize how exhausting it is to hold back 20-30 kids day after day for that one kid or group who hate going to school and only want to ruin the day for everyone else. We can all admit that there are some toxic people at the office yet to suggest as much with children is heavily frowned upon. I now have a live and let live approach to these specific kids. They can waste time, zone out, even chat with their buddies but as soon as they cross the line into bothering someone else then I must intervene. It’s really difficult to make everyone happy. It’s so wild to me how some kids will love me while others will view me as like some kind of antagonist in a Charles Dickens story no matter how much I try to win them over. They just don’t want to be there.
- Bakary 6y ago
  We'll have to confront the nature of our education system pretty soon anyway since automation will probably destabilize the way society parcels out work and keeps people busy Some kids are diligent and eager to learn, but that doesn't mean keeping them on often absurd tasks or tasks with few applications in the real world is meaningful. Spending a decade optimizing for specific exams for specific institutions whose degrees are undergoing inflation at a rapid pace doesn't seem very efficient, but at least it's a compromise between various actors with various needs (parents needing a break, a lack of resources for each child, companies needing a quick if imperfect way to evaluate candidates, young people wanting an environment with people their own age etc.) Unfortunately, this compromise is being torn asunder by systemic forces that keep parts of it in place and make other parts increasingly unworkable. I don't have a solution in mind right now but I don't think it's as simple as just dumber kids ruining it, although it obviously is a factor in what makes schools unpleasant
  - bluefirebrand 6y ago
    This is a really thoughtful examination of the problems with contemporary public schooling, thank you for posting it. I do want to add that it's not necessary "dumb" kids who are ruining it. Just kids who don't want to be there, either because they don't want to participate or because they are bored, or because they aren't capable of sitting quietly for hours and hours, or they'd rather do something else, or whatever.
    - Bakary 6y ago
      Younger me would have paradoxically been in both the diligent and alienated category. The older I get, the more I realize that the openly rambunctious kids I went to school with probably had the right idea all along. They were experiencing an intuitive and deeply human reaction to what is essentially a wasteful cargo-culting process where grades and other such surrogate activities are mistaken for actions that directly contribute to life. It's a classic case of confusing ease of control and predictability for actual value. To some extent there is real value in the work, in that its get your foot through the door which in turns gets your foot in a series of potentially more pleasant doors down the the line. But the process is so utterly inefficient in terms of the effort and opportunity cost expended compared to what a job actually requires in the real world. I hope I'm not coming across as bitter, because I am in fact quite optimistic. We have the technological means to spread education far more easily. Bright students are faced with a more competitive world but also have the tools to make progress on just about anything. With ML, it might even be possible to offer personalized courses and the attention that every individual kid or young adult might need.
jokethrowaway 6y ago
Most adults can't do that
- MattGaiser 6y ago
  Slack won't let me.
  - yholio 6y ago
    Slack is the job you should focus on.

alistairSH 6y ago

The evidence says opening schools is safe. If and only if proper precautions are taken. Given the political climate in many GOP-led states, implementation of those precautions is not a given.

dominotw 6y ago
I am in the bluest of blue states. Our schools are closed. Why would schools be closed here for whats going on in alaska. I Don't understand logic behind your comment.
- rossdavidh 6y ago
  Alaska has pretty good results right now: https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/covid_stuff/Alaska.html https://www.rosshartshorn.net/stuffrossthinksabout/covid_stu... Of course, Alaska also leads among all states in the percentage of its population vaccinated, but it's still much less than half so if their policies regarding covid-19 were egregiously bad, I think we would see it in their results by now.
  - dominotw 6y ago
    Sorry I wasn't implying Alaska is doing poorly. Its just the first "GOP lead state" that came to mind. Its great that they are doing good. I was trying to make a point that how what is going in "GOP lead states" is relevant to my school.
- scyAnts0 6y ago
  Numbers are going down because people aren’t clustering. Until vaccination rates hit a tipping point, putting people back together now will create a spike. I do not really get the concern? So it takes longer for Timmy or Alice to get to multiplication?
geoduck14 6y ago
Hey, now. I'm in Texas. Our schools are open, and we are taking precautions.

ugexe 6y ago

Saying “the evidence” without supplying any evidence isn’t going to further your point

dominotw 6y ago
How though? Isn't onus on the ones making the original claim. Original claim was, "schools need to be shut down because they will increase covid spread" Person making the claim needs to comeup with "the evidence" not the other way around.
- solosoyokaze 6y ago
  Anyone with children will tell you that school is a major disease vector. It's common sense and basic medical knowledge. Putting a bunch of people together spreads disease, especially when they're a bunch of children with dubious hygiene habits.
  - dominotw 6y ago
    > It's common sense So when should schools be opened according to this?
    - solosoyokaze 6y ago
      When children can get vaccinated.
      - dominotw 6y ago
        and presumably teachers and staff too. Hope this administration follows common sense.
        solosoyokaze 6y ago
        I agree, everyone should get vaccinated before they get into large groups. EDIT: would love to know why anyone would downvote this. Seems uncontroversial to people who aren't anti-vax.

ajford 6y ago

Given the number of contact tracing event's I've had since my kids school opened (with only about 30-50% in person attendance), I strongly disagree with 'safe'. I've had to quarantine my oldest since his younger brother is at risk (asthma), and the toll it took on him was insane. We talked with him constantly over voice and video calls, he interacted with his brother over Amazon Echo's drop-in feature and online games, and we tried to do everything we could to make it as 'fun' as we could. He still has nightmares about being locked away from his brother, or that he got his brother really sick. Why are we pushing for widely opening schools when even half-occupancy is dangerous enough to cause this kind of trauma to a child? I'm sure I'm gonna get asked why they're in person, but the reasons venture to more personal than I care to post, but in short, they're both in Spec. Ed and weren't coping with virtual learning at all, even after many months of trying to figure it out. Combine that with two working parents and you have a recipe for virtual schooling (or zoom school as my kids call it). I say we shouldn't open schools until we can vaccinate school staff. Preferably also students, but I realize that since most kids are in low-risk groups that's likely far off. Perhaps for high-risk students with compromised respiratory systems.

djrogers 6y ago
I think children such as yours should be the exception to the rule for open, in-person schooling right now. Your story, while tragic, perfectly makes the point that most families don't deal with the issues that you're facing, yet many don't have the option to send their depressed, underperforming, and stir-crazy kids to school.

fasteddie31003 6y ago

School might not be 100% Covid safe, but the alternative of kids reducing their parents output and losing out on social and educational skills is worse that Covid. It's the same ethics struggle I see over and over again with Covid. Deontological: It is a little more dangerous, just shut it down. Consequential: We need to worry about the big picture and the treatment is worse than if we did nothing.

neogodless 6y ago
> is worse that Covid Statements like these are always interesting to me. Covid has killed half a million Americans in under a year. During that year, many parents are operating at reduced productivity, and their children are likely getting less out of their public education than usual. How do you compare these two statements to clarify that one is worse than the other? Obviously a known death toll is an easily identifiable bad thing. The other half of the equation is harder to quantify. Some benefits include children being exposed to new forms of large group virtual communication. They are likely not well-adapted to them at this point - maturity and focus and motivation are all likely lacking, especially for rushed, poorly designed virtual systems. Then again, perhaps there will be a rubber band effect of refreshed engagement as children return to physical education in the year ahead.

neogodless 6y ago

There does seem to be evidence that in-person schooling is not a substantial contributor to community transmission[0]. This link is just the first one for Google search results for query "evidence on opening schools." That being said, I don't think you're expressing yourself well, or communicating with others well. What we saw in 2020 was a lot of lightly tested theories about what would and would not work, some being encouraged only to later be found to be incorrect. And the 2020 winter has been a complete flood of community transmission. So one approach might be to take a list of available actions to reduce transmission where possible, and hopefully cumulatively make a big difference, even if each action contributes a small amount. We also know that educators are among Phase 1b for vaccine qualification, so we should be able to imagine that having a largely vaccinated population of teachers should improve both safety of opening schools physically, as well as the optics of doing so without putting our teachers at risk. [0] https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775875 https://jamanetwork.com/journals/jama/fullarticle/2775875

goatinaboat 6y ago

As if educating children is not one of the most important tasks on the planet. Of course educating children is important but the current method of doing so is not the only possible one, and arguably prioritises the lifestyle of so-called teachers over that of children, parents, and taxpayers in general. What if the lesson of COVID is that MOOCs are actually better? Or homeschooling is actually better? Why should we go on paying teachers who, despite their bleating, are actually very well compensated for what they do (when they bother to show up).