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Comment by dchuk | Hacker News Reader

I very much agree. The whole situation is just crossing fingers and hoping things will go away as a replacement for pragmatism in the face of no good options. Complete failure of leadership at every single level.

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Or really just where the buck is meant to stop.

The problem is that a pandemic is an n-th order effect nightmare, with a distinctly low failure threshold based on covid's epidemiological parameters. A country's commander in chief needs to listen to scientific expertise & provide clear public communication and apolitical leadership to avoid this kind of calamity, which just didn't happen.

If I receive poor direction from leadership, I have two options: say forget it and blame them for my lack of action, or determine my own course to handle the situation. I agree that ultimately, the federal government is to blame. But the fact that almost no one at the state or local levels took some initiative and started preparing for this eventuality tells me that we have no leadership anywhere in the whole system.

My school district in Virginia prepared the best they could. They had previously procured chrome books, just not in the massive numbers needed for every student to have one, which they gave to families on an as needed first come first serve basis back in spring and throughout the summer. They distributed hot spots to students without internet or adequate speeds. They provided lunch through the buses to students that needed them. They spent the summer fighting with other localities to procure as many chrome books as possible for the fall and when they found out they were going to come up short they used funds to make sure atleast everyone had a tablet as a stop gap until the student could receive a laptop. It's not prefect, Google classroom training could be improved, I noticed it was hard to find overall schedules and homework assigned that wasn't meant to be turned in via classroom and have heard younger students especially have trouble with the tablets over laptops, but the first week of class seemed to have gone as well as it could have given the situation.

The response has not been a resounding failure across the board in states that also didn't pretend like the federal government that the virus would just go away and wasn't a real problem. But if there had been a real federal response I'm sure more students would have laptops and internet, online classroom training would be better, and importantly cases would be down and we'd be safer.

Can you imagine beginning Kindergarten as a 5 year old this year? At least many of these kids have grown up around more technology than I did, I'm not sure I had even seen a computer when I was 5. I didn't have one at my house until middle school. How are they supposed to navigate online classes when they can't even read?

The main benefit of school at that age is learning to interact appropriately with your peers and teachers. Hopefully the younger kids are more resilient and adaptive than I'm giving them credit for, because I can't imagine it being anything less than frustrating and depressing for them.

My comment is specifically talking about the experience of fifth grade. Of course a five year old would have more trouble but it's not a wash for all of elementary school in places that decided early they were going to be remote and that they had to prepare the best they could with little federal help.

Yeah, I wasn't criticizing your comment, more observing how difficult things are going to be even in the most prepared districts.

It's no different than it's always been. All of the hard work, planning and preparation has been on the shoulders of teachers for as long as I can remember. They've never had much guidance from leadership, which is often nothing more than a target grade their students have to hit on a standardized test. Up until now the status quo has been fairly consistent, so teachers have been able to informally provide guidance and leadership to each other. Now that things are taking a massive left turn, what is supposed to be the actual leadership is being exposed for what it really is.

Why prepare when you can just bully people into doing what you want (in person school). No options will cause most people to just go along. This is all by design. I plan to vote out every member of my school board except the one guy who actually responded to my emails.

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