361–370 of 793 posts
I speculate that students who spend time learning from internet resources like Khan Academy will get a significant leg up over their colleagues in this case; even more so than usual. This applies both in the sense that "They will learn more effectively", and "They'll have a better shot at getting into universities".
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you read the OP? What they are doing in school right now is also a joke!
I did. Here's the line that stuck out to me: > One student tested positive IN THE AUDITORIUM, and a few students started screaming and ran away from him. I suggest fixing the ludicrously miscalibrated risk assessment of omicron as a better route. How many of these legions of absent teachers even have symptoms?
Teachers in the US usually have 80% of their time spent spent teaching with 20% prep and duties (lunchroom or recess). Now you get a few people out with no subs available and you have teachers combining classes or covering others, leaving no prep time or unmanageable classroom sizes. Add to that a room of kids preoccupied with covid concerns and unable to concentrate.
Seems to me that the school is unnecessarily scaring kids more than doing anything else. These teens have almost nothing to fear from covid. Most of the rest of the country (outside major cities) almost ignores covid exists. Good article on the subject: https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/12/where-i-li...
Hate to tell you this, but this is not a good article on the subject. It was as performative as the mask wearing it complains about, and is oddly disconnected from reality considering how many deaths of people the author's age have happened in Michigan (Where he lives). Sure the teens might be fine with Omicron (earlier variants had much higher chances of lasting health impact it appears), but not necessarily their p…
They ignore COVID there - and are there more deaths as a result or not? Should be easy to find out.
Freddie de Boer just wrote something on his Substack about this - https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/many-kids-dont-have-a-w... The quick takeaway is that school is that for the most vulnerable kids, school is about a lot more than education. Taking school away from those kids can be much more damaging than many people realize. It seems to me like that right strategy would be to just say something like: We encourag…
It will be year 3 of covid and this is 100% the fault of the same people who have created every other problem in the education system: the administrators. There is no perfect way to open schools, that much is certain after looking at other countries. But looking at the state of things, it doesn’t even seem like people are trying. Japan has students come in on alternate days, so that the school can operate at 50% capa…
Sweden suffered 1,504 deaths per million, while Finland had 295. To call them "similar" is disinformative, at best.
I previously didn't think about it this way, and thought closing schools was the more sensible choice. But we're failing a whole generation like this.
It more and more feels like we live in a society that sarcrifices their young, just to keep old people on their life support machines a little longer.
Yeah, that's hyperbole. I don't know what's the right path, tbh.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I believe it's hard to appreciate the frustration and costs that closing schools causes, at least for children to be too young to be left without supervision. I can't think of any other measure that gets even close. The effects of restaurant closures can be mitigated by throwing money at the problem. If you have to stay home and take care of children, your career will suffer even if you are compensated for lost incom…
> at least for children to be too young to be left without supervision Maybe school openings should just focus on that age group instead of being all-or-nothing? They could give extra focus to preschool & kindergarten, reallocate teachers from higher grades to decrease student-teacher ratios and help spread the infection risk thinner.
Freddie de Boer just wrote something on his Substack about this - https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/many-kids-dont-have-a-w... The quick takeaway is that school is that for the most vulnerable kids, school is about a lot more than education. Taking school away from those kids can be much more damaging than many people realize. It seems to me like that right strategy would be to just say something like: We encourag…
Freddie de Boer just wrote something on his Substack about this - https://freddiedeboer.substack.com/p/many-kids-dont-have-a-w... The quick takeaway is that school is that for the most vulnerable kids, school is about a lot more than education. Taking school away from those kids can be much more damaging than many people realize. It seems to me like that right strategy would be to just say something like: We encourag…
It will be year 3 of covid and this is 100% the fault of the same people who have created every other problem in the education system: the administrators. There is no perfect way to open schools, that much is certain after looking at other countries. But looking at the state of things, it doesn’t even seem like people are trying. Japan has students come in on alternate days, so that the school can operate at 50% capa…
But we’re not going to have a third year of COVID anyway. Nearly everyone is going to catch the omicron in the next couple months, and by April we’ll have enough herd immunity to reopen everything.
Has technology for teaching remotely improved this pandemic? Anyone heard of anything? It has been two years and the high school teachers I talk to say it has not at all.
The big reason for older teachers retiring early is due to their network exploding due to stock market gains, fear of Covid, and hatred of remote teaching.
I think at this point - people are starting to learn that education wasn’t the primary goal of school. It was to be a daycare with the guise of learnings being done. Go with remote - no one wins.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not following. The vast majority of people in school are younger than 18. I agree with you that it should be fine for most parents to leave an older kid (say 14+?) at home alone. But again, some kids just want to go to school to get some damn food, regardless of age!
I’m mostly curious about why the maturity period was prolonged by 5-10 years from what the human race had 100 or 1000 years ago. I’m not talking about education but the transition from youths to adulthood.