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No Way to Grow Up

nytimes.com

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Re: No Way to Grow Up

#541

Post by istjohn »

lucaspm98 wrote: post #459
honkycat wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How could you argue we have gone "hard left" exactly? What is an event or piece of legislation that has been passed?

Socially and culturally it's undeniable, it's now completely unacceptable in my professional and social circles to publicly support one of our two political parties. Politically, outside of the obvious 2020 election, there has been unbridled and unprecedented government spending since at least the beginning of the pandemic. Whether it was justified is up for debate, we likely still haven't realized all of the effects…

Politically, we're deadlocked as always.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#542

Post by tzmudzin »

partiallypro wrote: post #507
honkycat wrote: post #428

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think democrats are the left?

I love this talking point, because in comparision to basically every country, US Democrats are socially very far left. It's only fiscally where they are more moderate. Which is basically the opposite of what most Americans want, yet they seem confused on why they struggle.

> in comparision to basically every country, US Democrats are socially very far left

I'd really want to see the data on which you base this belief. Watching US politics from Europe I see the Democrats roughly matching the European center. European "left" has no voice in the US!

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#543

Post by owenversteeg »

barry-cotter wrote: post #82
throwawayboise wrote: post #4

I am very thankful that my youngest graduated high school in 2020. The last couple of months were screwed up, but there wasn't much real education lost by then; most seniors pretty much check out after Spring Break anyway. I really feel for the kids who are younger. The effects of this are going to be with us for decades.

> The effects of this are going to be with us for decades. Unlikely. The evidence from kids who get sick enough to miss a lot of school is that at worst it takes three years for them to be indistinguishable from those with uninterrupted school attendance. Even unstructured homeschoolers, who have little to no explicit instruction of any kind, are only on average a grade level behind average children[1]. The last hist…

If you read the second paper you cited, directly from the abstract, you'll see that they explicitly said that 1918 was "starkly different from today":

> Our results are not inconsistent with an emerging literature that finds negative short-run effects of COVID-19-related school closures on learning. The situation in 1918 was starkly different from today: (1) schools closed in 1918 for many fewer days on average, (2) the 1918 virus was much deadlier to young adults and children, boosting absenteeism even in schools that stayed open, and (3) the lack of effective remote learning platforms in 1918 may have reduced the scope for school closures to increase socioeconomic inequality.

Furthermore, from the paper:

> Another important contrast is that school closures in the 1918-19 pandemic were substantially shorter than current COVID-19 related school closures, potentially limiting their effects. In our sample of 1918-19 school closures, the average closure length was 36 days, and some cities decided to make up for missing school days by extending the school year.

Closing schools is just one of the many measures society has taken to steal the prime years of life from the young to give to the elderly.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#544

Post by bsder »

WalterBright wrote: post #535
bsder wrote: post #515

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the original link to the Gates Foundation report from 2014: "Lessons from Research and the Classroom: Implementing High-Quality Pre-K that Makes a Difference for Young Children" https://docs.gatesfoundation.org/documents/Lessons%20from%20... Everything in the report is 2012 dollars. Scale appropriately for today. Boston Pre-K is about $15K now while New Jersey would be about $18K now. These are minimums. More…

> teachers asking for donations to buy school supplies. Around here, the school district has razed the local schools and built fancy new buildings. Then they ask for donations to buy pencils, at what, 5 cents apiece? Does something seem wrong with this picture? Let's put it another way. $15,000 per student. 30 students per class. This is $450,000 per classroom per year. No, lack of funding is not the problem.

> Around here, the school district has razed the local schools and built fancy new buildings.

I see this too. Might I suggest that the school board get voted out?

Part of the reason why new buildings get built is because it's easier to get the funding for a new building than to get the funding for 10 more teachers. A new building is normally a simple bond proposition on the ballot and it's off and running. Hiring 10 extra teachers requires that the superintendent go to the school board (who will oppose it because "muh taxes"), then the local political entity (who will oppose it because "muh taxes") and maybe have to file a justification with the state.

And don't get me started about how funding can always be found for new sports facilities but God help you if you need a new lab.

(I would also point out that $500K gets you probably 10 teachers for a single year. You are thinking that $500K is some big amount of money when it doesn't even pay for a single teacher for 30 years (roughly $1.5 million)).

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#545

Post by btown »

nostrademons wrote: post #317
jdminhbg wrote: post #202

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is comparing the risk of death for people who are hospitalized to the risk for their age group, which is missing the major confounding factor that those who are hospitalized for Covid (especially in younger cohorts) are very disproportionately sick (from diabetes, obesity, immune issues from transplants, etc).

From the linked article: "The 12-month risk of mortality was assessed in unadjusted Cox regressions and those adjusted for age, sex, race and comorbidities." They controlled for comorbidities.

Specifically, they use the Charlson Comorbidity Index:

https://www.mdcalc.com/charlson-comorbidity-index-cci

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3818341/ - a peer-reviewed proof demonstrating how comorbidity indices are effective

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#546

Post by istjohn »

zookatron wrote: post #327
quadrifoliate wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many person-hours of lost productivity is there for each day a classroom is closed? At least a hundred per classroom, more than a thousand for each day a school is closed. I think I must have missed the point at which classrooms took on a responsibility for parental productivity? If so, does parental productivity also fall drastically during summer when schools have holidays? Stresses by the pandemic itself hav…

For better or worse American public schools have basically become an essential service as a free day care system for busy parents. I'm not saying this is good, I think it's a huge problem, but pretending that is not the way it is doesn't help fix it. The question is how to make improvements to our education system to prevent it from being misused this way, and on top of that how to actually politically make those cha…

That's not a bug, it's a feature. Why shouldn't we have socialized childcare? Our economy needs parents to be able to work 40 hours per week while raising children. If anything, we need to provide better support to families who can't afford childcare every summer.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#547

Post by istjohn »

yes_really wrote: post #524
quadrifoliate wrote: post #280

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> How many person-hours of lost productivity is there for each day a classroom is closed? At least a hundred per classroom, more than a thousand for each day a school is closed. I think I must have missed the point at which classrooms took on a responsibility for parental productivity? If so, does parental productivity also fall drastically during summer when schools have holidays? Stresses by the pandemic itself hav…

> I don't understand the American blind spot that allows people to think of schools being as essential as hospitals; and requires them to both face Covid infections while paying teachers $40k and doctors $400k. Clearly the rates at which teachers are paid indicate that US society doesn't consider them as essential. That's not how salaries work at all. Waste collection is extremely essential to society (without it, te…

And water is pennies a gallon while gold is $1,800/oz

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#548

Post by nocsi »

peppermint_tea wrote: post #532
khazhoux wrote: post #350

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I furiously disagree with anti-vaxxers and anti-maskers, but I'm very disappointing that the "official" Covid guidance mostly glosses over the (apparent) fact that children simply don't suffer major effects, except for a very small number of them (comparable to other common seasonal viruses). After two years and 300,000,000 cases worldwide, don't we have enough data by now to know that Covid isn't a major health risk…

You have a good point, but I also think it will take more time to get the full picture of long covid in children (number affected, symptoms etc). https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanchi/article/PIIS2352-4... Because of the lack of data, it seems like I am running an experiment on my child either way : - if I send her to school where she will most likely catch covid (1st generation of kids to catch covid at a young…

They really didn’t want to push vaccines on children since there were early studies they would develop myocarditis and inflammations. Really the vaccine isn’t made to prevent you from getting covid. It’s so you won’t die. Children don’t really need that since they don’t have significant symptoms. That being the case, what’s the point of them getting vaccinated if it presents risks.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#549

Post by WalterBright »

bsder wrote: post #544
WalterBright wrote: post #535

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> teachers asking for donations to buy school supplies. Around here, the school district has razed the local schools and built fancy new buildings. Then they ask for donations to buy pencils, at what, 5 cents apiece? Does something seem wrong with this picture? Let's put it another way. $15,000 per student. 30 students per class. This is $450,000 per classroom per year. No, lack of funding is not the problem.

> Around here, the school district has razed the local schools and built fancy new buildings. I see this too. Might I suggest that the school board get voted out ? Part of the reason why new buildings get built is because it's easier to get the funding for a new building than to get the funding for 10 more teachers. A new building is normally a simple bond proposition on the ballot and it's off and running. Hiring 10…

$450k/class/year needs to pay for only one teacher for one year.

Re: No Way to Grow Up

#550

Post by School-Cotton »

rebeccaskinner wrote: post #351
School-Cotton wrote: post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> kids growing up in the middle of a society collapsing under the weight of a pandemic Society is collapsing under the weight of our reaction to the pandemic, not under the weight of a pandemic itself. There is no reason why a pandemic that kills fewer than 1% of people would cause anything to collapse. (That's about how many people die every year anyway, of normal causes). > Fair would have been for everyone to do t…

> Society is collapsing under the weight of our reaction to the pandemic, not under the weight of a pandemic itself. What restrictions? We've barely done anything to contain the pandemic. We had, what, a month or two of restaurant dining closed at best. The mildest possible hint of a suggestion that maybe you should cover your mouth instead of directly huffing air from strangers? > There is no reason why a pandemic t…

If you think the restrictions in the US were just a month or two of restaurant dining being closed, we live in such completely different realities that it's not worth engaging with you.

I live in NYC and describing what happened in that way is an almost comical understatement.

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