Closing the world's schools caused children great harm • Hacker News Board

Re: Closing the world's schools caused children great harm

#51

Post by AndrewBissell » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 4:28 PM UTC

adamnemecek wrote: post #20

BitwiseFool wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So much of school is socialization with other human beings. Beyond academics, children need to experience being in a group and learning about how people are supposed to interact with each other. And most of this is not explicitly taught, but acquired through trial and error and simple monkey-see, monkey-do. You can't get that level of interaction and fidelity online.

Sure. But then you end up with adults who are incapable of socialization outside of school. Maybe having children develop making friends outside of school is a good idea.

> Maybe having children develop making friends outside of school is a good idea.

What? You're going to let your children have playdates? In the middle of a pandemic?!

Re: Closing the world's schools caused children great harm

#52

Post by jchallis » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

Private schools in the Bay Area quickly adapted to the situation and stayed open, while even the wealthiest district public schools took a long time to follow. My two cents: school boards were much, much slower to adapt lessons from elsewhere in teaching students when compared with how fast healthcare adapted to managing patients. The lack of adaptability in a changing environment is the true damning weakness.

Re: Closing the world's schools caused children great harm

#53

Post by jacob171714 » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

Um, children can still spread covid. Even if they have a low chance of dying ignoring that its not binary and you can have long term health effects even if you don't die they can make family members and teachers/staff sick and get them killed. Children are really good at spreading illness.

Re: Closing the world's schools caused children great harm

#54

Post by [deleted] » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

Natsu wrote: post #9

jfengel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me that this was a poor decision. You can't send children to school if there are no teachers. And the teachers were not going to put their lives on the line for those jobs. Teachers are well aware that whatever is going around among the students will get to them. They get every cold and ever flu. If school boards said, "We're staying open for the sake of the children", teachers would have said, "Fin…

Honestly, I wonder if remote learning couldn't be better for at least some student populations. I have family who were bullied terribly (think on the level of "attacked by a crazy person with a knife at school" and "sexually harassed by teachers") and they probably would've benefited from an easier way of getting away from their tormentors instead of having to quit school and get a GED. I know that's not a one-size-f…

[deleted]

Re: Closing the world's schools caused children great harm

#55

Post by iforgotpassword » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 4:32 PM UTC

JoeCianflone wrote: post #36

Oy. This article is silly. In March of 2020 when schools started to close we did not know the full impact of COVID. decisions were made with the best knowledge AT THE TIME. Also we still don’t know the full impact of COVID. This article has a sample size of 1 year. As a parent of 3 with a child who started Kindergarten in September and did the entire year virtually—I’d rather deal with the fallout of having to “catch…

This yes. Though, I'm still mad that they vaccinated old people first instead of children so that they could return to school sooner. Old people are retired and can stay at home. Yes it sucks, they're lonely yada yada but ffs they already lived their lives, why should the next generation botch their edication just so the old people can travel again sooner?

Re: Closing the world's schools caused children great harm

#56

Post by void_mint » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 4:33 PM UTC

AndrewBissell wrote: post #12

jfengel wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not clear to me that this was a poor decision. You can't send children to school if there are no teachers. And the teachers were not going to put their lives on the line for those jobs. Teachers are well aware that whatever is going around among the students will get to them. They get every cold and ever flu. If school boards said, "We're staying open for the sake of the children", teachers would have said, "Fin…

> And the teachers were not going to put their lives on the line for those jobs. Many of them were at greater risk of death from driving to school than they were from Covid.

When everyone runs the risk of dying in traffic accidents in quick succession, every individual traffic accident becomes more problematic

Re: Closing the world's schools caused children great harm

#57

Post by robomartin » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

5bolts wrote: post #41

robomartin wrote: post #25

This whole narrative is insane. I can't help but think there's an underlying objective to drive for additional funding to fix a problem that does not exist. Kids did not go from learning 100% to 0%. Let's make an argument that, perhaps (and I don't believe this either) they learned 50% of what they would have learned in person. Half. OK. How much harm does that cause? For reference, I have two kids who went remote th…

should attempt to start with a shop class / home economics being mandatory like Gym was when i was in highschool... Thankfully they were available to me - to many of my friend's kids don't even have the option these days as the shops and kitchen labs are closed due to costs... but they sure fund the shit out of sports.

Among other things, I had a year of technical drafting in high school. I also had a year of photography (including film development, printing, etc.). My first two jobs out of high school were: Customer service at a professional photo laboratory and then technical drafting at a film studio. I have zero debt from college.

Nobody leaving high school is going to make money sipping wine while discussing the finer details of Roman history. Sorry to take such a harsh line on this. Culture and context is VERY important, of course. We just don't need 12+ years of it.

The first 12+ years of school is our "young-adult factory". We get one shot (over 12+ years) to produce young adults with a solid future. We do not do a good job of this. We waste a good deal of that time with pursuits that will not deliver measurably significant improvement to the rest of their lives. That's a crime. In this context 2020 was a rounding error.

Re: Closing the world's schools caused children great harm

#58

Post by AndrewBissell » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 4:34 PM UTC

JoeCianflone wrote: post #36

Oy. This article is silly. In March of 2020 when schools started to close we did not know the full impact of COVID. decisions were made with the best knowledge AT THE TIME. Also we still don’t know the full impact of COVID. This article has a sample size of 1 year. As a parent of 3 with a child who started Kindergarten in September and did the entire year virtually—I’d rather deal with the fallout of having to “catch…

This paper which was published in May 2020 established that the IFR of Covid was in the 0.05% range for people under 70, lower for those without comorbidities. It was peer reviewed and published by the WHO in October 2020. There is no excuse for how long it has taken people to come to a more accurate assessment of the risks of Covid -- and public opinion polling shows the public is still grossly overestimating that risk.

https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2020.05.13.20101253v...

Re: Closing the world's schools caused children great harm

#59

Post by briffle » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 4:36 PM UTC

seasoup wrote: post #30

This article doesn't take into account that maybe the kids didn't all get sick because closing the schools helped stop the spread of COVID in kids. It's like saying I exercised and lost weight so clearly that exercise was a waste of time, I would have lost weight anyway.

We had a person running for government office in Oregon loudly proclaim over and over, "Why do we have have to have these mask mandates and rules. Oregon has one of the lowest infection rates"..

Some people just seem to get cause and effect mixed up.

Or the threads all over twitter this winter alleging 'funny numbers' because the flu cases were so low last year.. Imagine that, when everyone is social distancing, we have our lowest amount of influenza ever.. it must be a great conspiracy to manipulate the numbers..

Re: Closing the world's schools caused children great harm

#60

Post by AndrewBissell » Fri, Jun 25, 2021, 4:37 PM UTC

iforgotpassword wrote: post #55

JoeCianflone wrote: post #36

Oy. This article is silly. In March of 2020 when schools started to close we did not know the full impact of COVID. decisions were made with the best knowledge AT THE TIME. Also we still don’t know the full impact of COVID. This article has a sample size of 1 year. As a parent of 3 with a child who started Kindergarten in September and did the entire year virtually—I’d rather deal with the fallout of having to “catch…

This yes. Though, I'm still mad that they vaccinated old people first instead of children so that they could return to school sooner. Old people are retired and can stay at home. Yes it sucks, they're lonely yada yada but ffs they already lived their lives, why should the next generation botch their edication just so the old people can travel again sooner?

This was entirely the correct decision given that old people are often at substantial risk from Covid, and children almost none. "Old people are retired and can stay at home" betrays huge ignorance of differing socioeconomic conditions as well as social needs of the elderly.