Teachers are ready to quit rather than put their lives at risk • Hacker News Board

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

#571

Post by shreyansj » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

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…

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

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

#572

Post by duderific » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:33 PM UTC

usaar333 wrote: post #481

politelemon wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do they have the budget for counseling when students and teachers pass away? It pains me to admit that this didn't even occur to me as part of the topic of teachers being sent back. The human aspects of students-teacher relationships. I feel I've been desensitized to this after exposing myself to a constant stream of news, and now I'm thinking further about what other aspects lie behind other headlines. Thank you f…

It's a human aspect, but to be blunt, it's not a significant consideration as long as you aren't opening schools in an area with high community transfer (e.g. Houston today). IF you additionally filter out high risk-group teaches (known pre-existing health conditions, older than 65, etc.) excess death risk is quite low. (e.g. in the Bay Area, dying in a car crash remains far more likely (~10x) if you meet the criteri…

> You shouldn't be having high risk-group teaches

So who should take the place of these high risk-group teachers? There aren't infinite qualified people waiting around to teach elementary school.

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

#573

Post by aquadrop » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

QuercusMax wrote: post #311

In Santa Clara County, CA (Silicon Valley), a group of 40 principals got together in person a few weeks back to discuss reopening plans. And they got COVID. Is it any wonder that teachers don't trust that they will be kept safe?

They didn't get covid to be fair though. There was exposure, but no one tested positive.

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

#574

Post by watwut » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:34 PM UTC

twblalock wrote: post #532

csa wrote: post #414

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Interesting. What grade levels? This seems to reflect that many of these folks seem to think what they are asked to learn is largely detached from their dat-to-day lives. I would agree with that assessment for high school students who are not college-bound. Specifically, high school for these folks is a rehash of middle school, a simplified version of college prep (which is not relevant for folks not going to college…

The people who told me this are elementary and junior-high teachers. The students are fairly young. They are all on social media though, which is why they all learned that the state won't hold students back this year.

Fairly young students are not motivated without personal contact and relationship. Which is more likely reason then fear of non existent threat of being hold back.

They also can't organize to be at online lessons unless parents do that work.

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

#575

Post by sokoloff » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

Avicebron wrote: post #535

Fargren wrote: post #471

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the world has reacted better than the US. I agree it's not easy, it has not been easy for anyone. But the unwillingness/incapability of the US to suffer backlash from their own moneyed interests is not the norm. It's a symptom of a dysfunctional system. It shouldn't be normalized.

Agreed it's a disturbing realization of the unspoken acknowledgment people in the US have been forced to live with: "capitalism doesn't care if you live or die"

Neither does socialism, communism, or nature.

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

#576

Post by avz » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

RestlessMind wrote: post #423

cool_dude85 wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure where you're from, but in many places, "society and government" has not failed people the same way it has in the US. Even within the US there are some places where local and state government have performed much better than places like Florida or NYC. That is to say, the problem is not, conceptually, "society and government", but instead, the American society and American government we have today. Don't give…

Let's see - US government instituted reasonably prompt lockdowns. They mailed one-time stimulus checks to everyone, gave 600$ unemployment insurance boosts, ramped up hospital capacities, opened up other support measures for businesses and allowed 50 parallel experiments (at state level) to see what works and what doesn't. Was the response perfect? Certainly not. Did some other countries do better? I'm sure we could…

> Was the response perfect? Certainly not.

No, it was not perfect. According to [1] the US has 27% of all cases of COVID-19, 24% of all COVID-19 deaths and 29% of new cases yesterday. For comparison US has 4.3% of world's population [2].

> Did some other countries do better? [...] it just means that you have only been exposed to Scandinavia and/or Singapore

Did some countries do worse? Italy is often cited as a badly hit country (and is not Singapore nor in Scandinavia), but if you look at their total cases curve [3] you'll see it has become nearly flat and new cases have been suppressed to near ~200/day from the peak of ~6k/day. For comparison, the corresponding plots for the US show a bungled attempt to flatten the curve followed by renewed exponential growth [4]. Daily new cases were only suppressed to ~1k/day from the peak of ~2.7/day.

> Does this make the US a "totally failed shit-hole state"? HELL NO!!

Well, what are the inclusion criteria? I'm asking, because when it comes to COVID-19 the US is doing so badly that now only 26 other countries have had more cases of COVID-19 since the beginning of the pandemic than the US added yesterday (73,388) [1].

[1]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/

[2]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/World_population

[3]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/italy/

[4]: https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

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

#577

Post by newbie789 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:35 PM UTC

blisseyGo wrote: post #400

Media has done a great job at fear mongering. People aren't realizing that kids not being able to go to school means the child abuse numbers are through the roof and they aren't even getting caught or reported. There are safe ways of achieving schooling without putting older teachers at risk.

Such as?

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

#578

Post by thatguy0900 » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:36 PM UTC

garmaine wrote: post #480

core-questions wrote: post #453

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Even for parents like myself that are really, really trying to make it work, it's a nonstarter. I have a 7 year old, and his computer is right next to mine where I am working remote, and I can supervise, except I'm in meetings often and it's hard to keep him on track. There's no peer pressure from other students to behave, the teacher has poor equipment and is barely intelligible sometimes, and there's every incentiv…

The alternative option is hybrid remote/on-site schooling, where the kids are on campus half-day, rotating groups a few days a week, on an alternating week schedule. That gets critical face-to-face time, albeit with social distancing, that is necessary (particularly for elementary) to support a workable remote learning plan on the other days. This is what my school district, for example, was planning on doing until t…

This is what my nephew is doing, and it's 100% incompatible with working parents. How can they work around shifting 4 hour days with alternating weekly schedules?

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

#579

Post by sokoloff » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

WalterBright wrote: post #521

rorykoehler wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That’s a cultural problem. We need to change it so intrinsic motivation is the driving force behind education.

My parents told me that if I didn't get a good education, I'd become a "ditch digger". Of course, these days operating a Ditch Witch isn't a bad job at all, and frankly looks like fun!

I got one and dug trenches for a sprinkler system in a pretty small city yard. It was fun for about 30 minutes, which represented a disturbingly small fraction of the total job.

2/10. Would not recommend.

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

#580

Post by RestlessMind » Fri, Jul 17, 2020, 9:37 PM UTC

Proziam wrote: post #483

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…

The problem is that people think the D's and R's are dramatically different. They both have similar statist agendas just marketing themselves towards different demographics. Neither party has many any substantial effort to rebuild our infrastructure, develop genuine disaster preparedness, reduce tax burdens on the middle class, and so on. All of those things lead to what we're seeing now where the average person can'…

I see that you are being downvoted, but I do agree with some of your points.

> people think the D's and R's are dramatically different

This is so true. Let's ignore fringe topics like Green New Deal or White Supremacy and look at what the mainstream portions of the parties are debating about - abortion, transgender rights etc.

But what are the key differences between tax policy or curtailing corporate powers or entanglements in various wars? You will have to squint hard. And please don't cite Warren or Sanders when it comes to corporations and D's - those two lost the primary handily and when D's controlled all the levers of the powers in D.C., they happily bailed out the Wall Street without punishing a single banker for the crash of 2008.