5 ms·

No. It wasn't that bad. School still continued. Your children are at most slightly inconvenienced during a global pandemic that has killed MILLIONS of people.

by dsl 5y ago

No. It wasn't that bad. School still continued. Your children are at most slightly inconvenienced during a global pandemic that has killed MILLIONS of people. All you have to do is keep your kid looking at a screen. They may need to repeat a year of school. At some point in their future your kids boss may say "oh right, you were a pandemic kid, here let me show you." It's like someone in WW2 UK complaining that the Germans dropping bombs on their neighbors houses knocked some of the good dishes off the shelf.

wizzwizz4 5y ago
The people getting hit hardest by remote learning are the poor kids, who have few enough opportunities as it is. (I can tell you from experience, these remote learning systems are horrible on a low-end device, yet almost tolerable on a high-end one. Parents with both the time and knowledge to assist with school-work aren't distributed evenly. etc, etc.) Universal education is supposed to be the great equaliser. I can't imagine the current state of remote learning achieves that, so I'm somewhat sympathetic to the people who push for schools to re-open in-person. I don't think it's worth people dying over, though, especially given that the qualifications are more important than the stuff you learn in school.
metadat 5y ago
Actually, it didn’t go well. Nowadays we’ve got a bunch of 6th graders still at a 4th grade education level. Remote learning for children is substantially less effective for many of them. Think about it, what are the reasons making close supervision of school-aged children desirable? Their brains are still growing and developing! They often aren’t mature enough to be academically successful when they’re physically isolated and stuck on a shitty google hangout.
ohhhhhh 5y ago
Nieve
Baeocystin 5y ago
I have family that teach in poorer districts here in California. Distance learning (for middle school in these areas that I have heard about) was and is an unmitigated disaster. A lot of the families served don't have reliable internet. Many have nowhere in their homes where a child can be in class without massive distractions of siblings/people/noise/etc making it essentially impossible for the students to pay attention. Often the laptops/chromebooks sent home with them don't last long due to external actions from others in the household. The teachers are trying their best, but the best teacher in the world can't overcome the nature of these problems, and the effects are absolutely compounding over the past couple of years. It's really, really bad.
baskethead 5y ago
If you think it wasn't that bad, you must be from a privileged household, and haven't paid attention to the data. Children, especially low-income children, have been devastated by remote learning. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-13/online-learning-fails-low-income-students-covid-19-left-behind-project https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-13/online-l...
- xedrac 5y ago
  Remote learning was a disaster for my family, and we have great internet with many computers, and a father who could troubleshoot all the problems, and tutor them some of the time. I cannot imagine what it was like for low income families.
darth_avocado 5y ago
“Slightly inconvenienced” is a term I can assure you would be only used by someone who doesn’t have kids. Sure, the first six months, or even a year can be discounted as an aberration in the child development process and can be compensated for. This is year 3 with no end in sight. Do you even realize how much children develop in 3 years? A 6 year old and a 9 year old have a significant difference in cognitive capabilities and if you stop the learning process, the lifetime effect can be devastating. It doesn’t matter when you’re 30 and have to sit at home, but it absolutely does when you’re a child and your brain is developing. And based on my long career on the corporate ladder, absolutely no one cares about whether you were a pandemic baby, a child growing up in poverty or pretty much any other non visible handicap in your life. You either know stuff or you don’t. And since you mentioned World War 2, schools didn’t stop even in WW2, At a time when people didn’t even necessarily need to go to schools to eventually lead a comfortable life.
- caddemon 5y ago
  I get your overall point, but you're greatly exaggerating the length of time here. The entire pandemic has been going on for less than 2 years. I also don't know any district that wasn't in person this entire school year. Every family I know in my area (a pretty liberal area of the US) had a packed summer involving camps, friends, and road trips. Kids truly sat at home for about 1 year.
  - pcmoney 5y ago
    Sounds like a wealthy area. Now envision: You are a parent who HAS to work to make ends meet. Your work has to be in person (nurse, meat packing plant etc). You have two kids 3 years apart, say 7 and 10. One you just were able to adjust to school after years of sensory and social issues. The school is closed. The kids cant go in but bars are open.
    - caddemon 5y ago
      Certainly my circle is wealthier, but it is a major city and any mandates would apply city-wide. Rural areas have even fewer COVID restrictions. Please point me to a school district in the United States that has had no in-person option this school year.
jtbayly 5y ago
And what happens if you fail 50% of the students for 3 years in a row? It turns into a disaster.
- monksy 5y ago
  You come up with a plan to identify the problem, you find a way to tutor them, etc. There are many ways to help those who want to be helped. If they don't want to be helped.. well that's not a new problem.
  - jtbayly 5y ago
    Here’s a plan. We could come up with a place where we could teach them. And hire people to teach them. Let them go back to school. I don’t know what you call a person that thinks half of the population are Karens, but it’s absurd.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
nradov 5y ago
Closing schools was never necessary or even helpful. Some countries like Sweden kept primary schools open for in-person learning throughout the pandemic. They did fine.
monksy 5y ago
That's what I don't understand. Massive world wide problem.. but we have to keep cranking the kids through the meatgrinder (public school->college->first entry job) on time. God forbid, they stop, think about how things run, try to adjust accordingly. This is yet another problem that's ignored, swept under the run and "averaged out" as a solution.
gilbetron 5y ago
You are wrong. Deeply wrong. I respect HN's rules, so I won't reply as I really want to. There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year. Have others had it worse in history? Sure. But that's like saying if you get run over by a Prius, it doesn't matter because people that got hit by a truck had it worse. And for all that keeping kids at home, we really didn't gain anything. If you look at places and regions that kept kids in school and compare them to places that shut schools down, there's no discernable difference in outcomes. Because people intermingled anyway. So we could've at least had kids socializing and developing normally for that cost.
- GiorgioG 5y ago
  You're wrong. Deeply wrong. There is no deep psychological damage. Children are not fragile snowflakes - they're adaptable, resilient little humans. That's why as a species we continue to thrive. Stop inventing new problems that don't exist - there's already enough to go around.
  - adamcstephens 5y ago
    Humans are social animals and we can most definitely have negative long term impacts from social issues at childhood.
  - kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
    My wife used to teach reading to elementary aged children with reading comprehension issues. And she found that you cannot teach children how to make letter sounds via Zoom. They cannot see, hear, and experience the inflections and mouth/tongue movements required. The result is these children don't learn how to read. And studies have shown for ages that if a child is not a proficient reader by grade 3, they will likely never be proficient, ever. That's just one of many costs. We're leaving these children behind.
  - pcmoney 5y ago
    Have you talked to kids? Seen them? This has deeply and possibly irrevocably damaged many if not most of them.
sidlls 5y ago
This is comically out of touch with both how schooling works now and how the adult world will react to these kids' experience when they mature.

by dsl 5y ago

wizzwizz4 5y ago

The people getting hit hardest by remote learning are the poor kids, who have few enough opportunities as it is. (I can tell you from experience, these remote learning systems are horrible on a low-end device, yet almost tolerable on a high-end one. Parents with both the time and knowledge to assist with school-work aren't distributed evenly. etc, etc.) Universal education is supposed to be the great equaliser. I can't imagine the current state of remote learning achieves that, so I'm somewhat sympathetic to the people who push for schools to re-open in-person. I don't think it's worth people dying over, though, especially given that the qualifications are more important than the stuff you learn in school.

metadat 5y ago

Actually, it didn’t go well. Nowadays we’ve got a bunch of 6th graders still at a 4th grade education level. Remote learning for children is substantially less effective for many of them. Think about it, what are the reasons making close supervision of school-aged children desirable? Their brains are still growing and developing! They often aren’t mature enough to be academically successful when they’re physically isolated and stuck on a shitty google hangout.

ohhhhhh 5y ago

Nieve

Baeocystin 5y ago

I have family that teach in poorer districts here in California. Distance learning (for middle school in these areas that I have heard about) was and is an unmitigated disaster. A lot of the families served don't have reliable internet. Many have nowhere in their homes where a child can be in class without massive distractions of siblings/people/noise/etc making it essentially impossible for the students to pay attention. Often the laptops/chromebooks sent home with them don't last long due to external actions from others in the household. The teachers are trying their best, but the best teacher in the world can't overcome the nature of these problems, and the effects are absolutely compounding over the past couple of years. It's really, really bad.

baskethead 5y ago

If you think it wasn't that bad, you must be from a privileged household, and haven't paid attention to the data. Children, especially low-income children, have been devastated by remote learning. https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-13/online-learning-fails-low-income-students-covid-19-left-behind-project https://www.latimes.com/california/story/2020-08-13/online-l...

xedrac 5y ago
Remote learning was a disaster for my family, and we have great internet with many computers, and a father who could troubleshoot all the problems, and tutor them some of the time. I cannot imagine what it was like for low income families.

darth_avocado 5y ago

“Slightly inconvenienced” is a term I can assure you would be only used by someone who doesn’t have kids. Sure, the first six months, or even a year can be discounted as an aberration in the child development process and can be compensated for. This is year 3 with no end in sight. Do you even realize how much children develop in 3 years? A 6 year old and a 9 year old have a significant difference in cognitive capabilities and if you stop the learning process, the lifetime effect can be devastating. It doesn’t matter when you’re 30 and have to sit at home, but it absolutely does when you’re a child and your brain is developing. And based on my long career on the corporate ladder, absolutely no one cares about whether you were a pandemic baby, a child growing up in poverty or pretty much any other non visible handicap in your life. You either know stuff or you don’t. And since you mentioned World War 2, schools didn’t stop even in WW2, At a time when people didn’t even necessarily need to go to schools to eventually lead a comfortable life.

caddemon 5y ago
I get your overall point, but you're greatly exaggerating the length of time here. The entire pandemic has been going on for less than 2 years. I also don't know any district that wasn't in person this entire school year. Every family I know in my area (a pretty liberal area of the US) had a packed summer involving camps, friends, and road trips. Kids truly sat at home for about 1 year.
- pcmoney 5y ago
  Sounds like a wealthy area. Now envision: You are a parent who HAS to work to make ends meet. Your work has to be in person (nurse, meat packing plant etc). You have two kids 3 years apart, say 7 and 10. One you just were able to adjust to school after years of sensory and social issues. The school is closed. The kids cant go in but bars are open.
  - caddemon 5y ago
    Certainly my circle is wealthier, but it is a major city and any mandates would apply city-wide. Rural areas have even fewer COVID restrictions. Please point me to a school district in the United States that has had no in-person option this school year.

jtbayly 5y ago

And what happens if you fail 50% of the students for 3 years in a row? It turns into a disaster.

monksy 5y ago
You come up with a plan to identify the problem, you find a way to tutor them, etc. There are many ways to help those who want to be helped. If they don't want to be helped.. well that's not a new problem.
- jtbayly 5y ago
  Here’s a plan. We could come up with a place where we could teach them. And hire people to teach them. Let them go back to school. I don’t know what you call a person that thinks half of the population are Karens, but it’s absurd.
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]

nradov 5y ago

Closing schools was never necessary or even helpful. Some countries like Sweden kept primary schools open for in-person learning throughout the pandemic. They did fine.

monksy 5y ago

That's what I don't understand. Massive world wide problem.. but we have to keep cranking the kids through the meatgrinder (public school->college->first entry job) on time. God forbid, they stop, think about how things run, try to adjust accordingly. This is yet another problem that's ignored, swept under the run and "averaged out" as a solution.

gilbetron 5y ago

You are wrong. Deeply wrong. I respect HN's rules, so I won't reply as I really want to. There is deep psychological damage to kids who sat alone, by themselves for the past year. Have others had it worse in history? Sure. But that's like saying if you get run over by a Prius, it doesn't matter because people that got hit by a truck had it worse. And for all that keeping kids at home, we really didn't gain anything. If you look at places and regions that kept kids in school and compare them to places that shut schools down, there's no discernable difference in outcomes. Because people intermingled anyway. So we could've at least had kids socializing and developing normally for that cost.

GiorgioG 5y ago
You're wrong. Deeply wrong. There is no deep psychological damage. Children are not fragile snowflakes - they're adaptable, resilient little humans. That's why as a species we continue to thrive. Stop inventing new problems that don't exist - there's already enough to go around.
- adamcstephens 5y ago
  Humans are social animals and we can most definitely have negative long term impacts from social issues at childhood.
- kQq9oHeAz6wLLS 5y ago
  My wife used to teach reading to elementary aged children with reading comprehension issues. And she found that you cannot teach children how to make letter sounds via Zoom. They cannot see, hear, and experience the inflections and mouth/tongue movements required. The result is these children don't learn how to read. And studies have shown for ages that if a child is not a proficient reader by grade 3, they will likely never be proficient, ever. That's just one of many costs. We're leaving these children behind.
- pcmoney 5y ago
  Have you talked to kids? Seen them? This has deeply and possibly irrevocably damaged many if not most of them.

sidlls 5y ago

This is comically out of touch with both how schooling works now and how the adult world will react to these kids' experience when they mature.