School Choice, Sorry I Underrated You
betonit.substack.com
betonit.substack.com
In Illinois they were masking children for a solid two years. I’m talking about 3-4 year olds. The last six months the teachers didn’t need to wear masks, but the 3 year olds did.
It took a couple months for us to realize how bad this was. We dropped off our children and all the kids were spinning around in circles, showing signs of autism. The reality is none of the kids could hear each other and the teachers couldn’t give instruction. It was insane. A kid can’t learn to speak, read emotions, feel a bond, etc when wearing a mask.
Not to mention kids dont and didn’t have covid risk. These lockdowns were insane and frankly did nothing but harm.
Once my wife and I realized what was going on we took our kids out and have been home schooling since. We moved across the country to a free state and haven’t looked back.
People don’t truly understand how stark the difference is between a free and lockdown state are. The kids are normal where I am now. They play together, articulate very well, and act like kids. There’s no fear.
When I was in a lockdown state there was fear. The parents had fear, the masks were (and still are) everywhere. Half the kids were stand off-ish and wouldn’t play together.
It was only a couple months ago mask mandates were lifted for 3 year olds. The level of anger me and many parents feel is palpable. I will never forgive what was done, we will never move back. I’ll look up every politician I vote for and see their stance going forward. It wasn’t just private schools being open, it was the government forcing children to wear masks or they’d close the school.
Is it a state where there were government mandated mask requirements in schools during a global pandemic? I’m in one of those and at no point in the past two and a half years would have used the term “lockdown” to describe my experience, but maybe I’m weird.
Maybe they kept mask mandates in place too long but most of the kids I know seem alright. It’s not like they were eating lead paint chips.
(My mom is in the high-risk group for Covid, so as you can imagine, I'm just a bit bias against this sort of thing.)
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It started out pretty good. I especially liked that he was open and frank about:
> in-person school provides invaluable daycare.
> convenience is one of the most important things in the world.
But then we get to a piece of all-too-common bad reasoning:
> the value of life-years saved by COVID prevention is small compared to the value of reduced quality of life-years caused by this prevention. Normal life plus COVID is better than lockdown life without COVID.
What this fails to account for is that it is right and proper to make sacrifices to prevent suffering in others. (One could say that "quality of life-years" is not fungible.)
The trade-off here is something like: Mrs. X dies in agony drowning in her own dissolving lung tissue- vs. -Young child misses two years of convenient daycare.
It's very convenient to characterize the cost as just "missing two years of convenient daycare". If you can't at least recognize that real harm was done to many children, you're not going to convince anybody that the "sacrifices to prevent suffering in others" argument is really on your side.
Of course I do, that's what I meant by "making sacrifices", eh?
The author of the article is the one characterizing school as mostly convenient daycare. He's saying private school is preferable because it provided daycare functions more than public schools, not that it has better educational outcomes. He's saying that it frees up the parents to "do" the economy, eh? It's not even "think of the children".
I'm not advocating a position in re: schools and the closure thereof.
Oh, but you do. As soon as you propose a comparison and adorn the left side of it with a very visceral image, and leave the other side without any epithets.
Just take a look, with the offending part italicized by me:
> Mrs. X dies in agony drowning in her own dissolving lung tissue - vs. -Young child misses two years of convenient daycare.
> I'm not advocating a position in re: schools and the closure thereof.
You seemed to me to be responding above to a position "Keeping the schools closed" that I am not advocating.
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> As soon as you propose a comparison...
I'm not proposing it, I am describing what the author wrote, using other words.
The author says "the value of life-years saved by COVID prevention is small compared to the value of reduced quality of life-years caused by this prevention", and I'm re-phasing that to point out that this is not a simple economic trade-off (the author is a Professor of Economics at George Mason University.)
> leave the other side without any epithets
Again, it's the author of TFA that is saying that school is mostly just "convenient daycare".
> a very visceral image
Yeah, I'm trying to emphasize the point.
> the offending part italicized
That's a description of how Covid kills you. I'm not sure how it's offending you. I'm not trying to be offensive.
To me it seems you could call it "offensive" in that it's a horrible way to die, eh?
Anyway, I hope this clears things up. I'm not interested in serving as some kind of proxy for the authors opinion, eh? If you want to debate my characterization of what the author is saying that's cool, but I'm not arguing with you about school closures.
You think you just added an impartial characterization to one part of the comparison, but it's not impartial.
Here, let me play the same game:
Mrs. X who refuses to get vaccinated dies of Covid vs abysmal education for tens of millions of American school-aged children and reduced convenience for them and their families.
Am I impartial?
And just to declare upfront my own biases. I have school-aged children, and they go to public school. Fortunately, their school opened early to as much a degree the Department of Education would allow (i.e. initially 2 days per week, later 2.5, later 5 but back to remote as soon as one kid had Covid, etc). For that I'm thankful. I wish more families had my luck, but I know that many, many families did not. I also have a high risk mom (cancer survivor). I advised her to get vaccinated as soon as possible, and she did.
Those are conjugates of the same word. What is your actual point?
> you just added an impartial characterization
Is it accurate or inaccurate characterization of TFA? Can we talk about that? Do you think I misunderstood what the author is trying to say?
> but it's not impartial
Yeah, I said up front that I'm biased against the "sacrifice the oldies for the sake of the economy" meme. I'm also biased against stupidity, which is to say that the author seems stupid to me.
> Here, let me play the same game
I'm not playing a game, and I know what I wrote.
> Mrs. X who refuses to get vaccinated...
I never mentioned getting or refusing to be vaccinated. That's all you.
> ...dies of Covid...
See, that's a euphemism. It's not a tidy, peaceful death. It's "dies in agony drowning in her own dissolving lung tissue" like I said. I'm not employing some rhetorical device, it's a simple plain English description of how Covid kills you.
> abysmal education for tens of millions of American school-aged children
Now there is something we could talk about.
But first let me point out that that's not what the author of the piece was saying. He wrote,
> But since most adults retain almost no academic knowledge, I’m skeptical of the long-term harm [of school closures]. Instead, I rest my case on the indubitable fact that in-person school provides invaluable daycare.
He's not talking about the harms that lockdowns did to children, in fact he discounts them. When I wrote "Young child misses two years of convenient daycare" I wasn't impartial, I'm describing the author's stance (which, as I said, is stupid IMO, I'm biased against it.) Your rewording misrepresents the author's argument.
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Anyhow, I personally have had a low opinion of public school ever since I was made to attend as a child. It seems to me that the US education system is a sick joke, and that "abysmal education for tens of millions of American school-aged children" is the norm anyway, long before the school closings. I think we should overhaul the whole system, and I while we're at it think we should look to making schools less of a disease vector. Covid won't be the last virus, eh?
If you want to argue about the state of the US school system, I'm "game" to do that. I got strong opinions and I'm willing to share.
If you want to argue about school closings vs. whatever I'm not your guy.
You may have heard of the recent San Francisco school board members recall? We threw out three of our top administrators. Just FYI, I voted to recall them, in part due to their poor handling of school re-opening. I hope that helps you understand that I'm not on "the other side"? We're all in this together. Humanity vs. the virus, eh?
Have a good day.
https://www.cnn.com/2022/02/16/politics/san-francisco-school...
P.S. Last but not least, God bless you and your kids and mom. I'm glad we talked this out. It's clear to me now that you are not one of these "mom should die so the kids can go back to school" folks and I really appreciate that. Take care, and well met.