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Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

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Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#721

Post by dragonwriter »

ipnon wrote: post #710
doggydogs94 wrote: post #406

Maybe a nationwide gap year.

This whole generation is going to be lost. It's not a cataclysm, but a whole generation of American kids are going to be a year or two behind on their studies. They will have grown up during unprecedented social unrest. If the economy doesn't recover and society doesn't support their families, millions of them will grow up in poverty. It's not a certainty, but the outlook could be much better. It's sad, I feel for th…

> They will have grown up during unprecedented social unrest.

No, they won't. The almost continuous post-war race riots and civil rights protests of the 1940s-1960s (overlapping with the anti-war protests of the 1960s), the intense period of labor and race riots in the interwar period, and...well, it goes on and on as you go back to and before the Revolutionary period.

Not unprecedented, or even close.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#722

Post by oramit »

marcell wrote: post #540
oramit wrote: post #358

What we currently have going on right now is a complete collapse in confidence. So many commenters are debating the death rate, case counts, hospitalizations, etc, which is all besides the point. Heres the thing: even if you believe people are being irrationally afraid, telling people they are stupid and should just suck it up isn't going to get people to cooperate. Do you want to be smugly right, or do you want thin…

> we didn't follow through with the lockdown nationally to actually stomp the virus This statement implies that there's a way to completely eradicate the virus, eg. if everyone in the world stays locked in their homes for 6 weeks, then the virus will be eradicated. That's not realistic, the level of coordination required to make that happen does not exist. So eradicating the virus was never on the table, no matter ho…

I actually chose stomp over eradicate because I wanted to imply that there would still be some left but that it would be a manageable amount. That's interesting that you took it the opposite way; I'm sorry for the confusion.

I agree, eradication was probably impossible in the United States. What I thought we all agreed on at the start of this thing was to lock down so we could "flatten the curve". Remember that? While we were locked down there would be an enormous marshaling of resources so we could equip everyone with PPE/Masks, get testing going, and do contract tracing. But because we didn't lock down the entire nation we snuffed out the hot spots in Washington and New York but let new ones fester and they are now out of control.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#723

Post by rsfern »

marcell wrote: post #612
shreyansj wrote: post #571

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But if everyone had stayed locked in for 6 weeks and if that had prevented 50000 deaths, how is that not worth it?

I'm not sure if it's worth it or not, but after you end the lockdown, you have the same situation you did at the start of the lockdown. I think there's a huge misconception in many media sources that lockdown will somehow eliminate the virus. It can change the onset pattern of the virus, but that's it.

One of the main points of the lockdowns were to get the infection rate down to a level where testing and tracing is tractable, not to outright eliminate the virus necessarily. It seems like most states in the US were not prepared for that when they decided to open back up, and now places like FL are in this impossible situation — how do you trace 10k+ infections a day?

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#724

Post by inerte »

watwut wrote: post #590
chrisseaton wrote: post #514

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If a child refuses to do anything when they were physically in school what was being done about it then? You can’t physically force someone to learn then and you can’t now. Not sure anything’s changed really. All they did before was remove disruptive children and now I guess they remove themselves. Remains an unsolved problem!

They were less likely to refuse the work. For one, kids are herd animals and when other kids are doing work, it motivates the slacker. For the other, teachers actually make them - most kids just kinda don't want to do it and will if pushed by teacher or motivated by system of rewards. Second, doing work at home alone all the time is much demotivating for even good kids. And parents are less fun to explain things then…

Teachers are so under appreciated. It takes a lot of knowledge, training, and some have years and years of experience on how to make kids pay attention to the class and study. I am trying really hard at home but there's no way I can even match any of the teachers my son has at his school on almost everything they do.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#725

Post by tremon »

ashtonkem wrote: post #477
fancyfish wrote: post #460

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This. Think of the marshmallow study where long-term planning kids turned out richer than the short-term minded ones. We need to push back against the Idiocracy mindset. It is our prerogative as the less reckless to breed and propagate our genes, and teach our culture to our young. As you mentioned, the force of nature is against that, so we need campaigns, perhaps by the State, for the “careful thinkers” to breed an…

The marshmallow test also selects for kids with food insecurity, you know.

Not only that, it selects for children that have learned to trust other people's promises. If you have learned that a promised reward will never materialize, the rational choice is to take the treat now.

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#727

Post by PNWChris »

dragonwriter wrote: post #478
jseliger wrote: post #447

Earlier quoted context omitted.

it hates publicly subsidized private schools that are not effectively accountable As opposed to existing publicly subsidized public schools that are not effectively accountable?

Charters are explicitly reductions in institutional legal accountability, and unlike public (charter or not) schools, the chief decision makers so released from accountability with private schools are not accountable by election, either.

Agreed with the above.

Harper’s recently ran a pretty good piece on the matter, if anyone is interested in a longer-form skeptical perspective on charter schools and their lack of accountability:

https://harpers.org/archive/2019/11/the-k-12-takeover-charte...

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#728

Post by panzagl »

jimbokun wrote: post #446
RestlessMind wrote: post #394

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Having government direct a mobilization is not acceptable. Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes. > ... good leadership ... but we chose someone who is committed to division, ... I'm no fan of our current leader, but let's be honest Obama failed to properly launch a…

> Then you would expect divergent performance in the D-controlled states (eg. California) vs the R-controlled states (eg. Texas), no? So far, I see all types of states having similar outcomes. Maybe if it were also possible to lock down borders between states, making them truly separate sovereign nations. A lot of states had a declining infection rate and looked to be getting things under control, then people travele…

You mean when all the New Yorkers left for Florida?

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#729

Post by prof-dr-ir »

int_19h wrote: post #621
prof-dr-ir wrote: post #269

It is a bit surprising to me that there is such a strong focus in the US on school closures and mask wearing (here on HN but also in the major newspapers). It is my impression that in quite a few European countries there have been, and to some extent still are, significant debates about the effectiveness of both these measures. On the other hand, there appears to have been a much more universal implementation of othe…

Social distancing isn't really contentious in US (other than the subset of the population that believes that COVID is hoax). "Stay home" is one of those things that are on every list of recommendations, but it's completely non-viable in practice because of the way US handles healthcare in work context. Keep in mind that there is no federal requirement for paid sick leave, and only 13 states mandate it. Consequently,…

Those are some very good points, thank you. The lack of paid sick leave makes me both sad and worried. My guess is that changing that situation, even temporarily, could make a big difference in containing the pandemic.

I could not find a reliable source that ascribes Japan's relative success to masks. Some ideas are discussed in https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-53188847 . The advice from Japan's ministry of health on masks is not a ringing endorsement, either: https://www.mhlw.go.jp/stf/seisakunitsuite/bunya/kenkou_iryo... .

Re: Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk

#730

Post by mariojv »

mulmen wrote: post #330
MattGaiser wrote: post #299

I have to ask you Americans. Are you giving up on society yet? I'm Canadian, and it is surreal watching the country below us completely waste the lockdown so they can go to beaches and bars and then urgently move to shoving kids back into the classroom. Do you still feel that you can count on your government? On your neighbours?

I’m optimistic. We are being tested from many directions right now and when we come out of this we will be better for it.

What makes you optimistic?
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