Snow days and Covid-19 droplet days

A friend and colleague who teaches at a college in a neighboring state published his resignation on a web site last month.  Covid-19 is the reason he is quitting.  He explained:

This has been a very difficult decision, but my wife and I are at elevated risk from the coronavirus. Even though [name of college deleted] is taking admirable steps to attempt to control the virus, I would still be in a poorly-ventilated classroom that would be crowded at or beyond social distance capacity for a certain number of hours a week, not to mention other possible "walking about" exposures on campus.  We did a lot of soul-searching and decided that this is the best course for us.

The professor was able to take retirement, an option that most people who must return to classrooms don't have.  The considerations he cites, however, are ones that everyone who is returning to school this year must face.  The coronavirus is virulent.  If you are exposed to it, you are very likely to get it. And the U.S. has been so inept in its mitigation efforts that you are very likely to be exposed to it.

Much argument is made about doing what is best for children, and the president and our governor are pushing to reopen schools with an astounding disregard for the contagion and lethality of this pandemic.  Their argument makes an appeal to the concern for  the well-being of children.  And they inflate the fact that children are not as severely infected as adults into the contention that children are impervious to it.  In an astoundingly stupid campaign letter, Noem  states the premise that children deserve all the opportunities that adults can provide them.  She "encourages" that all children be sent to school.   And, she emphasizes, "without masks."

Apparently, in Noem's mind, children deserve every possible opportunity to contract the coronavirus.   They can carry it home to give to their families.  And as many families are multi-generational, grandparents can share the virus without having to go out in public and combat social distancing and people with masks to participate in the virus fest.

Children are prodigious coronavirus vectors.  And schools, where students can crowd together without masks, make super-efficient distribution centers.  While social distancing and masks limit the spread of pathogens, the virus can still find its way through the barriers of space and filters.  And those who want to force the opening of schools are approving the sacrifice of school personnel and families and to keep the schools functioning.  They haven't given much thought to how pathogens are spread and who they endanger.  

Relative to the concerns about exposing children to the virus is the question of who should be given priority for treatment when medical facilities are overloaded.  Some contend that younger people should have priority over the elderly.  In a country which was formed around the principle of equality,  such decisions force someone to determine that some people are more valuable than others on the basis of age.  Such decisions deny that "all men are created equal," by asserting inequality as the factor that determines their demise.  When some criterion of unequal human value is imposed, the Declaration of Independence and the consequent Constitution are essentially nullified.  The coronavirus pandemic is a test of the concept of democracy.

For schools, which routinely designate snow days when a blizzard makes attendance hazardous and impractical, the safest decision would be to suspend classes until the pandemic is brought under reasonable control.  Resorting to online instruction is an alternative, but one that is not a possibility for all families.  Parents have to work and some are not able to supervise the instruction of their children--for many reasons.The development of a vaccine seems like the ultimate solution and a great deal of hope is placed on it.  But waiting for an uncertain vaccine in the future is to impose disease and death on many in the present.

Schools are designed to provide the opposite experience to that required by social distancing and the wearing of masks.  Enough people are opposed to those measures, although effective, to insure their failure as a means of gaining some control over the pandemic.  Quite a few people, such as the president and the South Dakota governor, deny the seriousness of the pandemic.   4.6 million sick from the virus and the families of more than 155,000 people who died from it no doubt think it is quite serious.  If it were a blizzard, the school officials would call a snow day.  Everybody stays home.

Experienced, competent K-12 educators think the solution is to suspend traditional classes and to work out curricula and instructional schedules that allow education to continue by using  electronic communication systems to eliminate in-person contact among students and staff.   Traditional classes and classroom configurations would need to be replaced by systems and procedures designed to prevent the coronavirus from entering the educational setting.  This would require a strenuous effort to co-ordinate the needs of families regarding childcare with the processes of educating children.  A major factor of concern expressed by administrators is protecting teachers and school staff from exposure to the coronavirus.  Balancing the need to keep children safe with the need to keep the educators safe will require drastic revisions to the way schools operate and their relationships to the communities they serve.   Forthright educators think there will be community resistance to the changes required.  Many teachers will decide, as did my professor colleague, to leave the profession rather than risk their own health and that of their families.  Shrewd educators are skeptical that public education can survive in an America that is divided the way it is.

The pandemic has not only put the nation under a siege of disease and death; it has exposed a prevalence of ignorance and malice in the nation.  Those who dismiss the fact of Covid-19 are the type who think the law of gravity can be repealed.

For the schools, we may be headed for the equivalent of a permanent snow day.