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Comment by stolenmerch | Hacker News Reader

I sort of hope so. Starting my child in Kindergarten this year has soured me to public schools somewhat. Nonsensical mask/distancing/sanitation protocols for people at low or no risk with no end in sight and seemingly dictated by the teachers' unions. Rudimentary and remedial math and reading education my child already learned in preschool just to catch every kid up to a common core. Cancelling fun holiday traditions in the name of equity and replacing them with bland, institutional versions (Halloween banned and replaced with a November "disguise day"). Most days my child comes home complaining how boring everything is and it kind of breaks my heart. I thought it'd be this inspirational learning center and instead it feels patronizing and mildly indoctrinating. Not sure there are other options though, so we'll make the most of it.

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> Nonsensical mask/distancing/sanitation protocols for people at low or no risk

I'm a teacher. I really don't want to catch COVID from a kid and bring it to my immunocompromised dad. So, irrespective of the risk to students (which is not high but I would not characterize it as low either), there are additionally risks to students' families and faculty.

I agree. Masks are so effective at stopping the spread of disease. As a former teacher/tutor/sub who moved around a lot, even before COVID-19, I got sick all the time. Little kid diseases are often less apparent in the little kids than adults, and teachers are just surrounded by runny noses, kids couching and sneezing, touching stuff, picking their nose, etc. It's nice to have a little protection. Hand sanitizer I don't think is as effective, but washing hands for sure.

I don't want your dad to get covid either. But every single school child and teacher has access to a vaccine at this point and teachers who feel they are at a special risk have access to KN95 masks. Instead, everyone has to wear some kind of cloth mask to show that "wearing is caring". We now have almost two years of data to look at. The risk to children is absurdly low.

Wearing masks is also about keeping schools open.

Yes, the risk to kids is low, but they are unvaccinated so outbreaks can and do happen. Substitutes are hard to get right now in most school districts and if you have an outbreak and even 5 percent of the teachers are home sick it is a very real possibility there won’t be a substitute to cover. In my local school district principals and administrators are covering classrooms for sick teachers because there are not enough subs. Teachers would traditionally just go to school sick, because they don’t get much sick time and even if they are sick they have to write a lesson plan for the sub, but now what do you do? Do you go to school even though you have a cold that could be covid? Do you write sub plans for a sub that might not be there?

Bus drivers are also opting out because many are elderly and at high risk and the pay sucks so the risk reward isn’t there even if they are vaccinated. Same with lunch ladies, janitors, you name it. There is a staffing crisis in education right now. Teachers are burned out and those that can retire are at a higher rate than before. It is a mess.

So no, children, even unvaccinated, aren’t likely to have complications from Covid, but wearing masks in schools might help just enough to keep schools open and operating.

This is a really good point, too: coverage for classes is hard. I've got a great workplace and we've not really had attrition, but when it comes time to find a sub we're facing a crazy marketplace: lots of teachers have left the profession; lots of people that would sub before are not bothering; and everyone needs more subs than the previous baseline.

It's gotten worse and worse. There was just an article published in NPR at how schools are closing again on really short notice due to staff shortages. That said, when I was a sub in NYC, it was incredibly hard to get certified (really long training process and quite challenging test), and then when we did start working, we only got paid $150/day. The only reason I could even apply to sub was because I was a bilingual educator. Otherwise, they weren't taking new applications. So finding qualified people through a rigorous vetting process and then only paying them $150 is not a great recipe for having a plethora of substitute teachers around. https://www.npr.org/2021/11/23/1057979170/school-closures-me...

> Substitutes are hard to get right now in most school districts

> wearing masks in schools might help just enough to keep schools open and operating

I think those are great points and I often try to look at it from the perspective of my child's teacher, not to mention the regulatory nightmares the administration goes through. I am friends and family with many public school teachers. I also think that's the point of the article though. It's hard to get a sub because teachers are quitting, not because of being out sick.

> I don't want your dad to get covid either.

Welp, students in my classes wearing their masks is a big part of how I'm still able to see my dad and not kill him.

> Instead, everyone has to wear some kind of cloth mask to show that "wearing is caring".

Because it's one of the most effective measures we have. Research (both observational and based on aerosol modeling) implies that surgical/cloth masks and getting windows open each reduces risk of infection about 4-5x, and they stack on top of each other for a ~20x total reduction. That's enough, with vaccination, to make me comfortable seeing my dad (masked).

> The risk to children is absurdly low.

About 70k kids hospitalized in the US so far-- so that's not absurdly low. And, again, the risk to children's families and faculty (and faculty families) counts too.

There is a huge risk to kids. My friends Jeremy Howard and Rachel Thomas recently compiled research on this topic. Especially of concern is long-term effects of COVID on children.

Rachel says, "research shows we downplay long-term effects of Covid on children" https://twitter.com/math_rachel/status/1454242957259800578 https://twitter.com/jeremyphoward/status/1420981223535517696

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-021-01935-7

Who knows, right? As the Nature article you cited points out, the research we have now is poorly controlled and hopelessly confounded and pointing in many different directions.

My personal belief is that COVID-19 and influenza are probably similar in children. But even that is more risk than people generally realize: a whole lot of permanent impact happens from influenza in children, but we just accept it and shrug it off as inevitable.

And, of course, while the average risk to kids may be moderate, there's also the much higher risk of cases communicated by children to their family, faculty, and the community at large.

Those protocols are theater, and have no demonstrable effect on reducing transmission.

Actually, we have a number of studies-- showing lower transmission rates in schools using mitigations (ventilation improvements, screening, teacher microphones, and masking)-- and we have aerosol-model based physics providing justification for why this works -- https://www.medrxiv.org/content/10.1101/2021.03.23.21253503v...

And, anecdote: I'm at a school with windows open & masking. We have a fair amount of mandated testing, and there's been no transmission at school detected despite several primary cases. Compare to other schools with a lot of transmission detected.

I don't financially need to work. I find teaching rewarding, but I'm not willing to kill my dad for it, kthx. I'm glad to be at a school which is making a reasonable compromise in this area.

I'm speaking mostly about SFUSD covid guidelines[1], which prominently mention hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, gloves, and gowns. AFAIK we have no evidence of those being effective at reducing indoor transmission.

Re: risk, I think that is a completely reasonable position for you to take. I also think it is reasonable for parents to prefer an environment that they feel is optimized for their kids needs.

[1] https://www.sfusd.edu/covid-19-response-updates-and-resource...

> I'm speaking mostly about SFUSD covid guidelines[1], which prominently mention hand sanitizer, disinfecting wipes, gloves, and gowns. AFAIK we have no evidence of those being effective at reducing indoor transmission.

That just says those supplies will be available. They're available at my workplace, too.

This is the one thing that we've de-emphasized this year:

> Staff will clean and disinfect frequently touched surfaces like door handles, desks, countertops, phones, keyboards, light switches, handles, toilets and faucets at least once daily.

OTOH, I do run a lab and now wipe down the frequently used tools a couple of times per day. It may or may not make a difference for COVID, but it probably will reduce the transmission of stomach bugs and influenza.

Hi Stolenmerch, I'm so sorry to hear what you are going through. As a parent, there's nothing more heartbreaking than seeing your child is not loving learning. I really do feel for the people trying to organize education at scale for 55 million kids across the US and maintain some level of base performance, but honestly the whole thing does not work. As you've experienced, in lieu of having values, everything has turned into a bland disguise day so no one is offended. That (btw) is kind of a metaphor for everything. I was a teacher in public, private school and a private tutor and rarely saw a school that was able to individualize learning for kids in the way that was needed. In public school, there is huge pressure on everyone to perform well on standardized tests, and in private school, there's huge pressure to get kids into Ivy League schools (so that they will get more donations). Worst of all, as you point out is the patronizing attitudes to parents. There's this attitude that you don't know what's best for your child which is total BS. If you like, I'd be happy to talk you through some options, modular learning, homeschooling, various learning apps, starting a learning pod, other alternatives. Of course, it's always a balance of childcare and education, but there are some really exciting options sprouting out there - and there is hope for you. If you want to chat, you can email me at manisha[at]modulo[dot]app. I've seen it all and I love talking to parents about alternatives, it also helps me learn as I'm working on building a decentralized school system, so it's great to hear about people's hopes, fears, constraints and see if there are ways I can be of support.

> Nonsensical mask/distancing/sanitation protocols for people at low or no risk with no end in sight and seemingly dictated by the teachers' unions.

The US Teachers union causes a LOT of problems. But mask, distancing, and sanitation are not one of them.

You wouldn’t like living in Asia. Here it’s the norm. The only people who get upset are westerners. But atleast I feel like my daughter is safe, and my in laws are safe.

It %100 is indoctrination. I have my own gripes with the public school system that go against woke culture but there is literally nothing I can do except pony up for a private education.

What's stopping you from pulling your kids out of school if you hate it so much? Genuinely curious..

is it childcare, a fear that you don't know how to teach, how to get started, worries about social learning? A lot of families are doing homeschooling, modular learning, microschooling...

Also as someone who has taught in public and private schools, I will tell you that even the most elite private schools are not that much better. It's still a group of kids in one class doing way too much homework and very little freedom to pursue their own interests.

Just as public school students are being indoctrinated, so are private school students. Indoctrinated, perhaps into different systems. The elite want to keep their kids elite, so maybe they are being indoctrinated into becoming the future leaders of wall Street and tech companies - and the government wants to control its citizens (there are some good reasons of course, for that, but a lot of bad reasons). Oddly, a lot of public school systems like bells and desks are designed to prepare kids to work for jobs in factories, so I'm not even sure this indoctrination is successful because it's a bit antiquated. Just hard to change.

It’s a matter of time, for me. I would also be worried about socializing from homeschool.

I work full time and my wife uses the time the kids are at school to manage activities, the home, etc.

Home school would be explored if we had a live in nanny and perhaps someone to help design a curriculum.

How about homeschooling?

https://www.econlib.org/emergency-homeschooling-a-how-to-gui...

Or modular learning? I'm trying to advance the idea that there's a better word that better defines a decentralized approach to education which is not school at home, but school out in the world, drawing on the best resources available for each child's individual education https://manisharoses.medium.com/not-school-or-homeschooling-...

Well there's "unschool", if you want a term that emphasizes that it's not school, but the way it's done is way more important than whatever it ends up being called.

As Caplan mentions in the above post, he's troubled by unschoolers' subpar math skills, linking to a post citing a study. I don't think the blog post you cited addresses that point (among other points).

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