Reveal Your Uncool Conservative Beliefs Here

That is certainly an uncool conservative belief.

can people please try to see their interlocutors' POV on the question of schools? it is a very hard question. we have two children. my youngest has now had his entire first semester of kindergarten on Zoom. he is a social child who thrives in classrooms, a leader among his peers and a good friend. the loss he is experiencing is heartbreaking. do I favor opening his school? no, I don't. I worked in health care for years, I believe in the most austere measures to contain the spread of infection. but I also have a job that allows me to give of my time to my kids, if I can manage to stay sane basically be "on" from 4 a.m. until I collapse at around 10. Most people don't have my job and they're suffering. Teachers who worked their whole lives to take an underpaid job shaping the future by teaching our kids are talking into a screen all day and wishing they could actually teach, wishing they could do what they take shitty pay for year-round. It's hard. When people hold opinions that are informed by their suffering, it would be nice if we could at least meet those people in a mood of compassion and understanding.

My hunch is that the main reason schools stayed open almost everywhere

One of the big ways that people are talking past each other on this is that advocates of open schools think schools are closed almost everywhere and advocates of keeping schools closed think they're open almost everywhere! And in fact it's bizarrely hard to get clean data about this -- I know what the story is for my kids' school district but I don't even know how to figure out what's happening elsewhere in the state except by going to individual county school board websites. Do YOU feel like you know what proportion of US K-12 schoolkids are attending class in person this week? I sure don't and I don't know how to find out. (Now somebody will show me up by Googling a reliable number but I promise, I have tried and failed.)

JCLC otm.
I've got a kid at school who also experienced the school closing before the summer and I was so anxious about just that relatively short break.
I've also had a friend die of Covid and really don't want to risk catching it as much as I can. Kid at school is my main risk and tbh I'm quite worried about January after the holiday free-for-all that we're not even participating in.
Schools in our area have generally had a few cases, but not ours. Yet. Other areas have had loads.

I'm sorry for your loss kinder

Thanks. I'm still shocked when I remember.

I MAY have mentioned a few times that I have a high special-needs kid who needs almost constant supervision. Two adults with full-time day jobs could not shepherd him through virtual school without something breaking, and breaking badly. Not just because of those day jobs, but because we have a whole other kid, a household, our own self-care needs, and, um, (gestures vaguely at the state of the universe).

My son being in some physical school (on an extremely limited and precaution-rich basis) has saved us from ruin.

At the same time, my teenage daughter is thriving in virtual 8th grade, with straight A's and decent coping skills. She just got into the school (likely virtual) play, while singing in chorus and doing online dance for musical theater.

Further, I am the grandson, son, and brother of many kick-ass educators, about whom I care a lot as well. So I *think* I am seeing multiple POVs.

My own personal POV is that this shit is a colossal mess that is hitting a lot of people very hard, and I empathize with pretty much all of them. Most of us are coping (albeit barely). Of course I reserve a special flavor of empathy for those whose losses are catastrophic and irreplaceable.

Pretty much every full remote day for my k and 3 kids ends in some kind of meltdown, and also leads to lots of work interruptions even with a babysitter there (and that help is expensive even though we are managing). The difference in the kids' mental and emotional well being between in person days and remote days is massive and persistent.

sorry for your inconvenience

Ye Mad Puffin do we know each other offline at all, are you FB mutuals w/Ned R or something? would love to talk.

Jclc, I don't think so, but my profile email is good

JCLC said it very well. I'm trying to find a solution to this that isn't painful for someone. Idk what it is

roger waters rules

i'm surprised being opposed to closing schools is a conservative opinion

https://www.thelancet.com/journals/lanpub/article/PIIS2468-2667(20)30084-0/fulltext

First, school closures will exacerbate food insecurity. For many students living in poverty, schools are not only a place for learning but also for eating healthily. Research shows that school lunch is associated with improvements in academic performance, whereas food insecurity (including irregular or unhealthy diets) is associated with low educational attainment and substantial risks to the physical health and mental wellbeing of children. The number of children facing food insecurity is substantial. According to Eurostat, 6.6% of households with children in the European Union—5.5% in the UK—cannot afford a meal with meat, fish, or a vegetarian equivalent every second day. Comparable estimates in the USA suggest that 14% of households with children had food insecurity in 2018.

Second, research suggests that non-school factors are a primary source of inequalities in educational outcomes. The gap in mathematical and literacy skills between children from lower and higher socioeconomic backgrounds often widens during school holiday periods. The summer holiday in most American schools is estimated to contribute to a loss in academic achievement equivalent to one month of education for children with low socioeconomic status; however, this effect is not observed for children with higher socioeconomic status.

Summer holidays are also associated with a setback in mental health and wellbeing for children and adolescents. Although the current school closures differ from summer holidays in that learning is expected to continue digitally, the closures are likely to widen the learning gap between children from lower-income and higher-income families. Children from low-income households live in conditions that make home schooling difficult. Online learning environments usually require computers and a reliable internet connection. In Europe, a substantial number of children live in homes in which they have no suitable place to do homework (5%) or have no access to the internet (6.9%). Furthermore, 10.2% of children live in homes that cannot be heated adequately, 7.2% have no access to outdoor leisure facilities, and 5% do not have access to books at the appropriate reading level. In the USA, an estimated 2.5% of students in public schools do not live in a stable residence. In New York city, where a large proportion of COVID-19 cases in the USA have been observed, one in ten students were homeless or experienced severe housing instability during the previous school year. While learning might continue unimpeded for children from higher income households, children from lower income households are likely to struggle to complete homework and online courses because of their precarious housing situations. Beyond the educational challenges, however, low-income families face an additional threat: the ongoing pandemic is expected to lead to a severe economic recession. Previous recessions have exacerbated levels of child poverty with long-lasting consequences for children's health, wellbeing, and learning outcomes.

https://www.nytimes.com/2020/06/05/us/coronavirus-education-lost-learning.html

The average student could begin the next school year having lost as much as a third of the expected progress from the previous year in reading and half of the expected progress in math, according to a working paper from NWEA, a nonprofit organization, and scholars at Brown University and the University of Virginia.

A separate analysis of 800,000 students from researchers at Brown and Harvard looked at how Zearn, an online math program, was used both before and after schools closed in March. It found that through late April, student progress in math decreased by about half in classrooms located in low-income ZIP codes, by a third in classrooms in middle-income ZIP codes and not at all in classrooms in high-income ZIP codes.

When all of the impacts are taken into account, the average student could fall seven months behind academically, while black and Hispanic students could experience even greater learning losses, equivalent to 10 months for black children and nine months for Latinos, according to an analysis from McKinsey & Company, the consulting group.

There are several reasons low-income, black and Hispanic students appear to be suffering the most through the crisis. The Center on Reinventing Public Education, a think tank, will release an analysis next week of the pandemic learning policies of 477 school districts. It found that only a fifth have required live teaching over video, and that wealthy school districts were twice as likely to provide such teaching as low-income districts.

that lancet article is from may, and I noticed you left out the first paragraph that said that the scientific merits of school closures are being debated.
there’s no question closing schools can hurt kids. it’s a harrowing choice and I don’t think there’s a good answer, but from what I have seen it is simply not true that we know children do not spread the virus significantly. they are more likely to have mild and asymptomatic illness and are systematically under-tested. the data are incomplete. I think it’s reasonable to conclude that despite what we don’t know, kids (particularly elementary school kids) should still be in school. just isn’t where I fall
school provides essential non-educational services for kids, which they obviously can’t get if they’re closed, but children suffer when family members die too. if our government would pay working class people to stay home, to ensure they can buy food, pay rent, etc, that would also be a nice step

that lancet article is from may, and I noticed you left out the first paragraph that said that the scientific merits of school closures are being debated.

it was just the first google result; there's a million things written about this since may, and there will be for years.

i was highlighting the stuff about unequal impact of closure on children from low-income families, not taking a stand on covid spreading. although the numbers hurting quoted above from nyc are very similar to those where i live, where schools have been open since september (with some short-term targeted closures) with no major spread

it's interesting to me (strokes chin) that nothing in your post acknowledges the unequal impact... ilxors are typically obsessed with socio-economic inequality, and yet on this topic it's like "children suffer when family members die too". but the marginal risk from opening schools is equally distributed among all families, whereas the costs of keeping them closed fall disproportionately on poor families. actually if anything, opening schools exposes higher-income families more, since they're the ones wfh

the impact of the virus itself is inequitable.
like I said there unfortunately is not the easy answer we want, even before we bring things like teachers unions into the equation

the impact of the virus itself is inequitable.

the total impact of the virus is inequitable; i'm arguing that the marginal impact from closing schools is inequitable

huh? I understand that. I’m saying that if one accepts that schools can be a source of spread, which I do for now until I am convinced otherwise, then opening schools risks increased spread and further death, which happens to be inequitable

like I said there unfortunately is not the easy answer we want

i realize you don't personally want to take a position on it, which is fine i guess. but it's not twitter literally no one is reading this u don't have to be afraid

there is no reason to privilege the position "we just don't have enough information, therefore we should keep schools closed" over "we just don't have enough information, therefore we should keep schools open"

it's not a matter of "wanting" an easy answer, it's making a decision under uncertainty

huh? I understand that. I’m saying that if one accepts that schools can be a source of spread, which I do for now until I am convinced otherwise, then opening schools risks increased spread and further death, which happens to be inequitable

― k3vin k., Saturday, December 19, 2020 3:09 AM (three minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

you think the marginal spread that will come from opening schools (people who will be infected if schools opened but otherwise would not) will be the same people who suffer the worst from schools being closed? why?

also, having the bar be "schools can be a source of spread" means that any positive amount of spread caused by schools is worth the unequal costs borne by students

you think the marginal spread that will come from opening schools (people who will be infected if schools opened but otherwise would not) will be the same people who suffer the worst from schools being closed? why?

should be "...will be disproportionately among those who suffer the worst from schools being closed?"

I’ve basically been clear I think — we don’t know the extent to which young children contribute to spread, but it is not negligible, and how that factors into one’s calculus is ultimately a personal judgement call. (I was being a bit coy earlier, man alive is wrong btw about our certainty regarding extent of spread, but he wouldn’t bite when I asked for data.)
my bias is that while closing schools clearly has the potential to be catastrophic, so does the alternative, and it won’t be forever. and in my (in this instance very amateur) opinion most of those harms are probably socioeconomic rather than strictly achievement-based, something that government can at least attempt to mitigate, which it has largely not. also I am in and out of ICUs for work so I am biased in this sense toward fewer people dead tomorrow

anyway this is a good editorial that reflects my feelings pretty well: https://www.thelancet.com/journals/laninf/article/PIIS1473-3099(20)30927-0/fulltext

you think the marginal spread that will come from opening schools (people who will be infected if schools opened but otherwise would not) will be the same people who suffer the worst from schools being closed? why?

― flopson, Saturday, December 19, 2020 3:15 AM (nine minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

maybe I am just not being clear. the same demographics I agree suffer disproportionately from closing schools also suffer disproportionately from more spread. I don’t know how to put it simpler than that

while closing schools clearly has the potential to be catastrophic, so does the alternative, and it won’t be forever. and in my (in this instance very amateur) opinion most of those harms are probably socioeconomic rather than strictly achievement-based, something that government can at least attempt to mitigate, which it has largely not.

imo this is a massive dodge but ok

also thank u for ur service <3

:)

getting my shot tomorrow

maybe I am just not being clear. the same demographics I agree suffer disproportionately from closing schools also suffer disproportionately from more spread. I don’t know how to put it simpler than that

― k3vin k., Saturday, December 19, 2020 3:28 AM (two minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

so that's the thing about the marginal vs average risk. increasing unconditional average risk disproportionately affects low-income workers, but the marginal risk from opening schools does not disproportionately affect low-income parents

low-income children who suffer a lot from missing school have parents who work in e.g. retail/services and who have a relatively high exposure risk compared to parents who can wfh and are also on average higher-income and have a lower cost of their kids foregoing school

opening schools will increase spread through schools as a first-order effect

given the pre-existing unequal distribution of risk, this will on average mean those with higher risk spreading to those with lower risk. in other words, the parents of low-income children get covid from work and their kids spread it to other kids at the school and their families

as a second-order effect, that spread will work its way through the population via chains of transmission

opening schools disproportionately increases risk for low-income families if the second-order effect dominates the first-order effect. so chains like: parent gets covid, their kid transmits it to other kid, their parents get it, then they give it to someone who gives it to someone who gives to a low-income parent. about 10% of the population are parents of school-age children, so about every chain of transmission of length 10 includes 1 school-age parent, on average

in a full, raging pandemic (north dakota in september) where R is wayyy above 1 maybe you could get the numbers to work, but i don't think any other scenario will deliver that

:)

getting my shot tomorrow

― k3vin k., Saturday, December 19, 2020 3:46 AM (fifteen minutes ago) bookmarkflaglink

ayyyyy :^)

We do have pretty good data from all around the world that children in school contribute less to the spread. The only study I have seen to the contrary was done in south India in areas where schools are extremely poor and overcrowded and multigenerational families live in tight spaces. It’s pretty clear at this point that in a 25-30 kid class with masking and even a few feet of space and a moderate amount of ventilation the spread is low among kids at school. Staff getting it from each other is more common than getting it from students.

you should at least read the editorial I posted that discusses the data we have, their limitations, and conclusions that can be drawn from them

i'm surprised being opposed to closing schools is a conservative opinion

The reason not to be surprised by this is that teachers' unions generally support closing physical schools, and diminishing the already much-attenuated power of teachers' unions is a first-order goal for movement conservatives that supersedes anything having to do with public health. They do not so much want public schools to be open as they want public schools to be closed and for the resulting costs to be blamed on the unions.

you should at least read the editorial I posted that discusses the data we have, their limitations, and conclusions that can be drawn from them

― k3vin k., Saturday, December 19, 2020 2:58 PM (one hour ago) bookmark flag link

i read it. it didn't say anything about the marginal spread from opening schools or its socioeconomic impact. it argued was that secondary schools might be sources of spreading despite there being only 55 cases of within-school transmission of 928000 kids are under-tested, because kids are under-tested

one cost (effect on kids of not attending school) is known. the cost on the other side, increased spread, is unknown. if 55/928000 is really the number, i think most people would agree the latter cost outweighs the former. however, if the authors are right and it's actually (55+x)/928000, how large does x have to be to reverse the calculus?

Climate is also a factor due to the importance of proper ventilation, so ideally we should specify which region(s) we're talking about. Anyway, here's some recent data from Quebec:

https://www.quebec.ca/en/health/health-issues/a-z/2019-coronavirus/situation-coronavirus-in-quebec/#c75434

As you can see, educational environments account for a non negligible percentage of active outbreaks.

gonna have some good data on this soon. the week of jan 11th everybody in my son’s 1500-student secondary school is getting tested! they’ve already had about 10 cases this term (that showed symptoms).

It's plausible that we'd see more spread if more schools were operating at full capacity, but masks, even minimal ventilation improvements, and measures such as avoiding eating close to one another seem to go a long way. In the US, schools that have seen outbreaks tend most often to be the ones taking no precautions whatsoever, e.g. not enforcing masks. But it's hard to find examples of school districts operating at full capacity but with masks and ventilation and other precautions, because there seems to be a polarization between areas where people have an abundance and possibly even excess of caution and places where they just think the whole thing is dumb.

In my county there are I think four school districts doing exactly what I said -- operating at full capacity but taking other precautions, but three of the four are wealthy districts that have a lot of extra space in their schools and the other one is moderately affluent and I don't know as much about it. So, again, trying to be as fair-minded as possible, it's harder to find examples of schools doing exactly what I advocate (at least at the elementary school level), which is masking and other precautions but full time in person for all who want it.

My district has kindergarten in full time and is planning to phase in first grade, fwiw. So far no outbreaks in kindergarten. Around 15-20 cases (more staff than students) in the district so far but none of them have been contracted within a school.

Also, perhaps ironically, the school district's attitude tends to mirror the region's attitude. So the places where they take no precaution at school also tend to have unchecked community spread, and the places where they take (I think) excessive precautions in the schools tend to be the places where they also have low community spread, which would actually make it easier to open safely.

do you think there might be a correlation between precautions taken and the level of community spread?

Of course there is, that's exactly my point. But what I'm saying is that there's a polarization where you either have places where both the school and the community are taking no precautions, or places where the community is taking precautions but also the school is not as open as it could be (in part because community spread is lower).

But I don't believe there's a causative link between *having school closed or partially closed* and lower community spread. That's the point.

surely if community spread was lower then the school would be more open

You would think so but no!

people who claim to observe / celebrate "solstice" or archaic winter solstice holidays like Saturnalia or Yule are 100% fronting

I get more aggravated when people get the basic facts wrong about "lol ur Christian holiday = really a pagan one." because they read a meme and now they want to impress people with obscure knowledge.

like the people every year who smugly ask "did u know Easter comes from Ishtar", which is completely wrong

xp sorry you don’t have an indigenous culture anymore i guess

I celebrate it because I'm sick of it being dark and am happy that we made it around the sun again

also, astronomy is cool

I appreciate crut's salty take here, though

^^^

Right. Paganism was completely gone from Europe everywhere but St. Kilda and parts of the Baltics by 1000CE. Also, "Pagan," in anything written by Protestants before the 20th Century, is an euphemism for "Catholic."

In Ireland we at least acknowledge the winter solstice every year, purely because the Neolithic passage tomb at Newgrange is designed specifically to allow the sun to enter the inner chamber on the solstice days. It’s nice to watch and feel that connection with the ancestors. They televise it and it’s wonderful to watch.

related: i never get how the white ppl i know who have the most ultra sensitive antennae for calling out cultural appropriation are the same ones who are always into doing solemn sage burning smudge rituals when they move into a new apt