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Comment by mbg721 | Hacker News Reader

That can be seen as "poorer people don't have enough access to the Internet" or as "the people in charge created too much reliance on the Internet". If COVID had happened 30 years ago, the risk tolerance would be different and we'd be much more reluctant to close schools for an extended period of time.

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Okay? By that logic, the entire world has created too much reliance on the internet.

We closed school when we had no power for 4 days two years ago. To extend your logic, schools have created too much reliance on electricity. If this was 100 years ago, the buildings would be different and we wouldn't have needed to close schools for an extended period. That argument doesn't make sense or have a purpose, but it makes just as much sense as your argument, to me.

I don't understand what you're trying to say here, I guess is what I'm getting at.

What I'm getting at is that to whatever extent poorer kids are falling behind academically right now, it isn't really for lack of Internet access, but because we made policy decisions assuming everybody could learn-from-home for months.

That's fair, but lack of internet access absolutely is a major problem. I still don't understand why you would try to remove that from the policy decisions about learning from home.

Yes, but it didn't happen 30 years ago. We have the ability to let kids learn from home and save more lives by doing so.

Except for poorer kids where "learning from home" isn't working. I think this approach that "we can just stay home and do everything online, we're saving lives, everything's fine," is generating a lot of unforeseen costs to society in the longer term.

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