COVID-19 & Education 3 July 2020

3 July 2020

COVID-19 has given the public school system an opportunity to be better.

Public schools are still run the way they were in the 1960s.  Parents take their kids to school, drop them off, and then go to work or do their thing.  COVID-19 has taken that away.  Parents have to parent AND educate their own children right now, and they don't like it.

I understand why parents are struggling with their children right now, but let's remember that people have children, and that action comes with certain responsibilities.  Why would parents want to take their kids back to school in August, when schools will be the next enormous breeding ground for COVID?

I also understand that people have to work, so they need somewhere to take their kids.  Some single parents, especially, will be forced to choose between having a job and paying for daycare, or quitting their jobs and going on public assistance.  The United States can't afford thousands more people collecting money from a government which is already trillions of dollars in debt.

Many solutions exist here, and the WRONG solution is to just throw thousands of kids into the same building and hope for the best.  The president may think it's time to go "back to normal" and get kids back in school, but what the hell does he know about the logistics of the educational system?  He doesn't even read his daily briefings for god's sake.  All he wants is for the economy to improve so he can boast about "fixing" America.

If high schools are trying to get students ready for college (especially in the junior and senior years), they should be taking half their courses online anyway.  They shouldn't need to be in a brick box for eight hours a day, five days a week.  Let's help them grow up, but treating them like adults.  And let's not punish them and their parents and their teachers by exposing everyone to a pandemic which now has over 3 million infections (and counting).

Educators, teachers, and parents in the United States need to rewrite the rules and use this opportunity to improve our schools and change our mission statements to include the best interest of everyone, including society at large.