Dr. Anthony Fauci’s recent dodge on school closures is at odds with many of his own statements.
Now as the disastrous consequences of COVID policies are making themselves all too apparent, the tyrants responsible for them are attempting to backtrack. But the people do not forget so easily
One shift in the public pandemic discourse that has been very noticeable to me is that people on the Left/progressive/taking-COVID-more-seriously side of things are much more willing to be nuanced than they were, say, from two years ago through fall 2021. There's more of a recognition that there is such a thing as too much paranoia and/or restrictions being too stringent, that the experts get things wrong enough that there's room for doubt on the effectiveness of certain rules, etc. There's much less of a "if you disagree with me, you don't care about human life!" attitude in response to disagreement. In particular, I was at a party of very socially progressive people recently where two of them were teachers who were talking very openly about just how badly children/teenagers/parents have suffered from remote learning in public schools -- on social, mental health, safety, economic, and educational levels -- and it struck me that this most likely would have been a dicier conversation a year ago if anyone in the room got some idea that the teachers were suggesting that these harms came anywhere close to the value of HUMAN LIVES.
And this is a good thing. But I've been feeling more and more heartbroken and gut-twisted over just how badly children and parents of children have been harmed by all the remote learning, especially in light of a lot of mutterings that it seems not to have mitigated the spread of serious illness as much as previously insisted. And I keep thinking about how the generational wars 10-20 years from now are probably going to have a lot to do with a new generation of adults (the one that comes after Gen Z) who have suffered pretty serious trauma from how messed up their schooling was during an intensely socially formative period of their lives, to the point that they'll bear a grudge against the older generations for screwing them over so badly.
But... (here's where I veer into more of a very speculative stream-of-consciousness thought and away from the very heavy issues at hand)... if this new generation adopts the same kind of political/social "moral purity" mentality that my generation has developed and retained, then we can point out to them that such a mentality (justifying everything in terms of mitigating risk to human lives from the virus) brought about the (arguably) botched response to COVID that screwed them over in the first place.
With the new academic year already hindered by COVID infections and closures, a new hurdle has emerged. A month of extreme weather has disrupted back-to-school across the country, with closures affecting more than 1.1 million students. More than 45,000 students in Louisiana alone are expected to be out of school until October because of lingering […]
Excerpt from this story from The74million.org (a news site dedicated to education issues):
With the new academic year already hindered by COVID infections and closures, a new hurdle has emerged. A month of extreme weather has disrupted back-to-school across the country, with closures affecting more than 1.1 million students.
More than 45,000 students in Louisiana alone are expected to be out of school until October because of lingering problems caused by Hurricane Ida, which made landfall Aug. 29.
Remnants of the storm also battered districts in Maryland, Pennsylvania and New Jersey with flooding and tornadoes. Additionally, rising temperatures coupled with inadequate air conditioning have closed hundreds of districts around the country.
Meanwhile, wildfires have scorched school grounds in California.
“Unfortunately, these horrific wildfires and other natural disasters have become our new normal as a result of the effects of climate change,” California State Superintendent of Public Instruction Tony Thurmond said in a news release Sept. 3.
The frequency and intensity of the natural disasters shuttering schools are in part due to climate change.
The Ontario government is closing all publicly funded schools across the province for two weeks following March break due to concerns about
"The Ontario government is closing all publicly funded schools across the province for two weeks following March break due to concerns about COVID-19.
Doug Ford's government said in a statement the move is "necessary to keep people safe" and based on the advice of Dr. David Williams, Ontario's chief medical officer of health.
“Our education system has mined our minds in the way that we strip-mined the earth, for a particular commodity, and for the future it won’t serve us. We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are educating our children.”
Remember that TED talk – from Sir Ken Robinson, who sadly died in this traumatic year of 2020?
“We have to rethink the fundamental principles on which we are…