A Year Later
February, 2021 begins next week. A year ago, the nation was watching Donald Trump on trial in the Senate, and Democratic Presidential candidates scramble to get recognition. And quietly, almost below the radar – we began to hear about a virus in Wuhan, China. Little did we know a year ago, that in 2020 over two million would die from that virus worldwide, and over 430,000 here in America. That’s more than in died in any war the United States ever fought except for the Civil War – and that “butcher’s bill” of 600,000 will be surpassed in the next couple months.
We are all now “experts” on COVID-19: on “social distancing” and quarantining. We all know folks who had COVID and recovered, and also those that didn’t make it. On the key hook by the door hang multiple face masks ready for use. Everyone has them. Some are fashionable, some make political or social statements, and some wear ones that look like the belong in an operating room. Ours are basic black – they go with everything and don’t look dirty (kind of strange – that’s the same reason I wear black running socks).
Jenn and I are retired, and spend a lot of time at home. There’s usually a TV on, and I’ve binged a few televisions shows (not programs, as I’m told by the advertisement). The new Star Trek Discovery series is the latest. But mostly MSNBC’s on, often in the background. Stephanie Ruhle, a morning news anchor, has made it a point to demand that children go back to “regular” school. And she points out two very valid reasons.
Back to School
First, she says, in-school education is much, much better than “remote” education. Of course it is. As a teacher, I know that the personal relationships between teacher and students are vastly important both to student achievement and personal growth. And, through my limited experience in online education, two months at the beginning of the pandemic, I know it’s so much more difficult to have those relationships “remotely”. So, everything else being equal, going back to school is a “great” thing.
And the second point Stephanie Ruhle makes is also valid. If kids can’t go to school, many folks can’t go to work. For those who don’t have the “luxury” of working remotely, remote school means don’t work (and not get paid), find someone to stay with kids (and pay them) or leave kids alone and unsupervised in remote school. From a national economy standpoint, schools being open is critical to getting the economy going particularly for lower income areas.
Compulsory Education
It’s a lot like the reason compulsory schooling began in the first place. Here in the United States, that took hold in the 1920’s. Of course it was about getting kids “educated”, but there was another reason just as significant. If kids were in school, they were out of the labor market. Child labor was a big deal in the late 1800’s and early 1900’s. Kids were agile, they could do the mass production work of that time. And they were cheap. They kept adults out of the job market. So sending them all to school kept them from working “in the mills”.
And another reason for getting kids out of “the mills” was the danger of doing hazardous work. One job was that of “breaker boy”, the children who straddled the elevated conveyor belts leading into coal processing plants. Their job was to pick rocks out of the passing coal and toss them to the ground. The dangers were great – the conveyors were high, and the “belts” were often slatted metal. If the kid reached in too deep, they could lose a finger, or a hand, to the “belt”. If they lost their balance, they could fall to injury or death on the piled-up rocks below. Child welfare meant getting them out of those jobs, and keeping them safe until they were old enough to “assume the risks” themselves.
It’s the Adults
We now know enough about COVID-19 that we understand that the risks to children are low. While they can catch the virus, and they can spread the virus, they are less likely to get sick from the virus. Those particularly vulnerable kids, or those with vulnerable adults at home, need to be removed from the school setting, but for most kids, school is fine.
So it’s not the kids at risk from open schools, it’s the adults. It’s the teachers and the custodians, the cooks, and yes, even the administrators. Like the “breaker boys” of the 1880’s, it’s the adults who are being asked to assume the risks.
And it’s a special kind of risk that we want those adults to assume. There are few jobs today that place large groups of people together in a single room. And since we know that children can have COVID without necessarily having the symptoms of COVID, we are asking those adults to go into a setting where transmission to them is more likely. It’s not the same as the other “essential” worker jobs we discuss. The grocery store clerks have more room, the postal workers are outside, and the meat processing plants test their workers. Even the hospital workers have the proper protection, and work in buildings designed to ventilate the virus away.
Chicago
The Chicago Public Schools ordered their buildings open, and their teachers to report for in-person instruction this week. The Chicago Federation of Teachers voted by seventy percent to stay out of school and continue online instruction. Their concern has two parts. Sources told the Chicago Tribune:
“They will not go back to schools until they think it is safe and urge CPS to come up with health metrics for when a school should be closed, and to take the idea of synchronous teaching — instructing in-person and remote students simultaneously — off the table” (Tribune).
The United States wants kids in school, but we haven’t spent the resources to make it safe for the adults working there. Schools aren’t improving ventilation systems (already a problem in our aging school structures). Schools aren’t “bigger”, so classroom sizes really haven’t changed much. In our local area, the “rules” were re-written so that kids could be three feet from each other in class instead of six, because there wasn’t the room for six-foot separation. And there is little or no COVID testing in schools. The schools depend on the county health departments, first overwhelmed by contact-tracing, and now by vaccine distribution.
Commitment
Schools aren’t closing because the kids are getting sick. To be brutally honest, we have no idea how many kids really have COVID, because we don’t test. Only the ones who get sick enough to go to a doctor and get reported to the County Health Department are known. What we do know is that schools are being closed because of staff absences. Teachers are getting sick, and substitute teachers, many, like me retired from a teaching career, aren’t working. We are among the more vulnerable to COVID infection.
Teachers want to work directly with kids. They want to be back in school. I’d like to substitute. But many know that they are putting themselves and their families at risk by being in the classroom. So what’s the solution? Vaccination of adult school workers and testing of kids is the answer, as well as spending the funds to make schools physically a safer place. And all of that takes time, money – and a national commitment.
Just wanting kids back in school shouldn’t make it so.
