4 ms·

School Choice, Sorry I Underrated You

20 points by hirundo 4y ago

carapace 4y ago
TL;DR: It's another "sacrifice the oldies for the sake of the economy" piece. (My mom is in the high-risk group for Covid, so as you can imagine, I'm just a bit bias against this sort of thing.) - - - - It started out pretty good. I especially liked that he was open and frank about: > in-person school provides invaluable daycare. > convenience is one of the most important things in the world. But then we get to a piece of all-too-common bad reasoning: > the value of life-years saved by COVID prevention is small compared to the value of reduced quality of life-years caused by this prevention. Normal life plus COVID is better than lockdown life without COVID. What this fails to account for is that it is right and proper to make sacrifices to prevent suffering in others. (One could say that "quality of life-years" is not fungible.) The trade-off here is something like: Mrs. X dies in agony drowning in her own dissolving lung tissue- vs. -Young child misses two years of convenient daycare.
- kbelder 4y ago
  >The trade-off here is something like: Mrs. X dies in agony drowning in her own dissolving lung tissue- vs. -Young child misses two years of convenient daycare. It's very convenient to characterize the cost as just "missing two years of convenient daycare". If you can't at least recognize that real harm was done to many children, you're not going to convince anybody that the "sacrifices to prevent suffering in others" argument is really on your side.
  - carapace 4y ago
    > recognize that real harm was done to many children Of course I do, that's what I meant by "making sacrifices", eh? The author of the article is the one characterizing school as mostly convenient daycare. He's saying private school is preferable because it provided daycare functions more than public schools, not that it has better educational outcomes. He's saying that it frees up the parents to "do" the economy, eh? It's not even "think of the children".
- credit_guy 4y ago
  Everyone who was high risk could get the vaccine by March 2021 (in the US). If they didn't it was because of their personal choice. Keeping the schools closed to protect the vulnerable is one thing, but to protect those who don't want to protect themselves is a different thing.
  - carapace 4y ago
    Why are you arguing with me? I didn't write the article. I'm not advocating a position in re: schools and the closure thereof.
    - credit_guy 4y ago
      > I'm not advocating a position Oh, but you do. As soon as you propose a comparison and adorn the left side of it with a very visceral image, and leave the other side without any epithets. Just take a look, with the offending part italicized by me: > Mrs. X dies in agony drowning in her own dissolving lung tissue - vs. -Young child misses two years of convenient daycare.
      - carapace 4y ago
        You left out the half of the sentence that qualifies what kind of position I'm not taking: > I'm not advocating a position in re: schools and the closure thereof. You seemed to me to be responding above to a position "Keeping the schools closed" that I am not advocating. - - - - > As soon as you propose a comparison... I'm not proposing it, I am describing what the author wrote, using other words. The author says "the value of life-years saved by COVID prevention is small compared to the value of reduced quality of life-years caused by this prevention", and I'm re-phasing that to point out that this is not a simple economic trade-off (the author is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University.) > leave the other side without any epithets Again, it's the author of TFA that is saying that school is mostly just "convenient daycare". > a very visceral image Yeah, I'm trying to emphasize the point. > the offending part italicized That's a description of how Covid kills you. I'm not sure how it's offending you. I'm not trying to be offensive. To me it seems you could call it "offensive" in that it's a horrible way to die, eh? Anyway, I hope this clears things up. I'm not interested in serving as some kind of proxy for the authors opinion, eh? If you want to debate my characterization of what the author is saying that's cool, but I'm not arguing with you about school closures.
elil17 4y ago
This whole blog post means very little unless you’ve read Caplan’s “The Case Against Education”
- StevePerkins 4y ago
  This comment means very little unless you actually provide some information or context about the citation and how it relates.
draw_down 4y ago
washbrain 4y ago
Typical political screed about education. Some interesting data in the middle, followed by the flimsiest possible analysis to conform to the authors pre-existing worldview.
lettergram 4y ago
I still don’t think this really states the difference. In Illinois they were masking children for a solid two years. I’m talking about 3-4 year olds. The last six months the teachers didn’t need to wear masks, but the 3 year olds did. It took a couple months for us to realize how bad this was. We dropped off our children and all the kids were spinning around in circles, showing signs of autism. The reality is none of the kids could hear each other and the teachers couldn’t give instruction. It was insane. A kid can’t learn to speak, read emotions, feel a bond, etc when wearing a mask. Not to mention kids dont and didn’t have covid risk. These lockdowns were insane and frankly did nothing but harm. Once my wife and I realized what was going on we took our kids out and have been home schooling since. We moved across the country to a free state and haven’t looked back. People don’t truly understand how stark the difference is between a free and lockdown state are. The kids are normal where I am now. They play together, articulate very well, and act like kids. There’s no fear. When I was in a lockdown state there was fear. The parents had fear, the masks were (and still are) everywhere. Half the kids were stand off-ish and wouldn’t play together. It was only a couple months ago mask mandates were lifted for 3 year olds. The level of anger me and many parents feel is palpable. I will never forgive what was done, we will never move back. I’ll look up every politician I vote for and see their stance going forward. It wasn’t just private schools being open, it was the government forcing children to wear masks or they’d close the school.
- cbilson 4y ago
  What is a “lockdown state”? Is it a state where there were government mandated mask requirements in schools during a global pandemic? I’m in one of those and at no point in the past two and a half years would have used the term “lockdown” to describe my experience, but maybe I’m weird. Maybe they kept mask mandates in place too long but most of the kids I know seem alright. It’s not like they were eating lead paint chips.
andrewclunn 4y ago
I'm pro-school choice and skeptical of lockdown's effectiveness concerning covid, but this article is... You know when somebody is "on your side" but arguing so poorly that you wish they weren't? With advocates like this, who needs opponents?

20 points by hirundo 4y ago

TL;DR: It's another "sacrifice the oldies for the sake of the economy" piece. (My mom is in the high-risk group for Covid, so as you can imagine, I'm just a bit bias against this sort of thing.) - - - - It started out pretty good. I especially liked that he was open and frank about: > in-person school provides invaluable daycare. > convenience is one of the most important things in the world. But then we get to a piece of all-too-common bad reasoning: > the value of life-years saved by COVID prevention is small compared to the value of reduced quality of life-years caused by this prevention. Normal life plus COVID is better than lockdown life without COVID. What this fails to account for is that it is right and proper to make sacrifices to prevent suffering in others. (One could say that "quality of life-years" is not fungible.) The trade-off here is something like: Mrs. X dies in agony drowning in her own dissolving lung tissue- vs. -Young child misses two years of convenient daycare.

kbelder 4y ago
>The trade-off here is something like: Mrs. X dies in agony drowning in her own dissolving lung tissue- vs. -Young child misses two years of convenient daycare. It's very convenient to characterize the cost as just "missing two years of convenient daycare". If you can't at least recognize that real harm was done to many children, you're not going to convince anybody that the "sacrifices to prevent suffering in others" argument is really on your side.
- carapace 4y ago
  > recognize that real harm was done to many children Of course I do, that's what I meant by "making sacrifices", eh? The author of the article is the one characterizing school as mostly convenient daycare. He's saying private school is preferable because it provided daycare functions more than public schools, not that it has better educational outcomes. He's saying that it frees up the parents to "do" the economy, eh? It's not even "think of the children".
credit_guy 4y ago
Everyone who was high risk could get the vaccine by March 2021 (in the US). If they didn't it was because of their personal choice. Keeping the schools closed to protect the vulnerable is one thing, but to protect those who don't want to protect themselves is a different thing.
- carapace 4y ago
  Why are you arguing with me? I didn't write the article. I'm not advocating a position in re: schools and the closure thereof.
  - credit_guy 4y ago
    > I'm not advocating a position Oh, but you do. As soon as you propose a comparison and adorn the left side of it with a very visceral image, and leave the other side without any epithets. Just take a look, with the offending part italicized by me: > Mrs. X dies in agony drowning in her own dissolving lung tissue - vs. -Young child misses two years of convenient daycare.
    - carapace 4y ago
      You left out the half of the sentence that qualifies what kind of position I'm not taking: > I'm not advocating a position in re: schools and the closure thereof. You seemed to me to be responding above to a position "Keeping the schools closed" that I am not advocating. - - - - > As soon as you propose a comparison... I'm not proposing it, I am describing what the author wrote, using other words. The author says "the value of life-years saved by COVID prevention is small compared to the value of reduced quality of life-years caused by this prevention", and I'm re-phasing that to point out that this is not a simple economic trade-off (the author is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University.) > leave the other side without any epithets Again, it's the author of TFA that is saying that school is mostly just "convenient daycare". > a very visceral image Yeah, I'm trying to emphasize the point. > the offending part italicized That's a description of how Covid kills you. I'm not sure how it's offending you. I'm not trying to be offensive. To me it seems you could call it "offensive" in that it's a horrible way to die, eh? Anyway, I hope this clears things up. I'm not interested in serving as some kind of proxy for the authors opinion, eh? If you want to debate my characterization of what the author is saying that's cool, but I'm not arguing with you about school closures.

elil17 4y ago

This whole blog post means very little unless you’ve read Caplan’s “The Case Against Education”

StevePerkins 4y ago
This comment means very little unless you actually provide some information or context about the citation and how it relates.

draw_down 4y ago

washbrain 4y ago

Typical political screed about education. Some interesting data in the middle, followed by the flimsiest possible analysis to conform to the authors pre-existing worldview.

lettergram 4y ago

I still don’t think this really states the difference. In Illinois they were masking children for a solid two years. I’m talking about 3-4 year olds. The last six months the teachers didn’t need to wear masks, but the 3 year olds did. It took a couple months for us to realize how bad this was. We dropped off our children and all the kids were spinning around in circles, showing signs of autism. The reality is none of the kids could hear each other and the teachers couldn’t give instruction. It was insane. A kid can’t learn to speak, read emotions, feel a bond, etc when wearing a mask. Not to mention kids dont and didn’t have covid risk. These lockdowns were insane and frankly did nothing but harm. Once my wife and I realized what was going on we took our kids out and have been home schooling since. We moved across the country to a free state and haven’t looked back. People don’t truly understand how stark the difference is between a free and lockdown state are. The kids are normal where I am now. They play together, articulate very well, and act like kids. There’s no fear. When I was in a lockdown state there was fear. The parents had fear, the masks were (and still are) everywhere. Half the kids were stand off-ish and wouldn’t play together. It was only a couple months ago mask mandates were lifted for 3 year olds. The level of anger me and many parents feel is palpable. I will never forgive what was done, we will never move back. I’ll look up every politician I vote for and see their stance going forward. It wasn’t just private schools being open, it was the government forcing children to wear masks or they’d close the school.

cbilson 4y ago
What is a “lockdown state”? Is it a state where there were government mandated mask requirements in schools during a global pandemic? I’m in one of those and at no point in the past two and a half years would have used the term “lockdown” to describe my experience, but maybe I’m weird. Maybe they kept mask mandates in place too long but most of the kids I know seem alright. It’s not like they were eating lead paint chips.

andrewclunn 4y ago

I'm pro-school choice and skeptical of lockdown's effectiveness concerning covid, but this article is... You know when somebody is "on your side" but arguing so poorly that you wish they weren't? With advocates like this, who needs opponents?