I've been thinking about the concern with kids not going to school for reasons beyond the rampant illnesses caused by letting a highly-infectious virus run wild.
The Fortune article suggests that schools are less welcoming now. "Everyone seemed less tolerant, more angry." They mention a host of reasons for absences including poverty, housing instability, transportation issues, and school staff shortages that mean a rotation of supply teachers. But they don't mention that Long Covid that has led many to be chronically disabled: From this article, a 13-year-old explained, "I don't remember a day without pain." H/t Laura Miers, who points out:
"We're disabling everyone. It will NEVER improve with no mitigation. Kids and adults are at the same risk for Long Covid."
Meanwhile, the Fortune article blames online learning:
"The effects of online learning linger: School relationships have frayed, and after months at home, many parents and students don't see the point of regular attendance."
That's party true. From what I've seen, many students and parents don't see the point of in class regular attendance. now that they've seen the huge benefits gained from remote learning. When we taught remotely, kids had some breathing room to do the work at their own pace, then do their own thing. I'm not convinced that's a worse education model despite some remote teachers trying to make sure they filled every second of their time with them. And I think it could continue to be offered like that if we want it to be.
Some parents don't think schools are safe for their kids - even in Canada - because of a perception of increased bullying. In one of my classes online, that was definitely the case, and I heard all their stories of racial discrimination. For autistic kids, "being around people all day in school and trying to act normal is tiring." And for immunocompromised kids, or anyone trying to avoid becoming immunocompromised, schools are the number one vector for the transmission of Covid.
But I think something else is going on, something that pre-dated Covid. From Healthy Gamer GG:
"The problem with the millennial generation is that we were sold a formula for success that did not work."
@healthygamer.gg This is the Problem Millennials Face
♬ original sound - Dr. K - Dr. K - Psychiatrist
School was supposed to be the one thing that would separate the successful from unsuccessful despite ladening people with massive debt. But it didn't work.
There was a time that more education meant higher earnings, but that was before neoliberal economics took root and wiped out the middle class by decimating wages. And then they came for the universities.
Kids see this with their own eyes. They know people, in real life, in real time, who worked their asses off to finish university and now have massive debt and can't find a job that pays better than minimum wage, if it pays at all (since companies love their interns), and can't possibly afford to move out of the house on minimum wage earnings. They did all that work and are no further ahead than their sibling who stopped going to school in grade 9.
Serious, if you were 15 right now, and cities in northern Canada were burning down and your friends were all getting sick over and over, and you have problems breathing when you leave the house because of the smoke in the air, and your teachers's never there because she's always sick, and the supply teacher just posts her lessons then talks about himself all class (came the feedback about my supply teacher - most of them are great, but not all of them!), how much would you care about joining other students, in person, to discuss To Kill a Mockingbird??
And it makes me think of the Rwandan genocide.
In Collapse, Jared Diamond explains that in 1993, just before the genocide started, 100% of 25-year-old men were still living at home, unable to live on their own or start their own families:
"The people whose children had to walk barefoot to school killed the people who could buy shoes for theirs."
Way beyond Covid and climate change painting a very dystopian future for our children, wage suppression started creating an entire generation who can't leave home to start their own lives. They're stuck in limbo. And they're justifiably angry.
But, like in Rwanda, some are taking their anger out on their neighbours instead of the forces that put them in this place.
At this point, if they're willing to learn from home, let them learn from home!! We need to keep that a viable option. We have the technology to make it happen, and it will also reduce the levels of illness from Covid, RSV, flu, and strep if we can reduce the numbers in the building.
But, more importantly, we have to fight for rent controls and affordable housing, and increase the minimum wage, and offer basic income to enable teenagers to see that young adults with the dignity to keep going, working towards helping one another in what will undoubtably be the most tumultuous period of history.
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