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Comment by lo_zamoyski | Hacker News Reader

Apart from the effects of the disastrous consequences of a largely pointless lockdown, the education system is and has been failing to educate in the true sense of the word for some time

I have always been dismayed by the overemphasis on funding at many educational institutions. "We need all this equipment! We need this, we need that!" As far as equipment is concerned, a good, true education is not that expensive. A lot of what is emphasized today boils down to frills and bells and whistles while the core of what is important is neglected.

This is one reason why classical schools are popping up all over the place that are inspired by the trivium and quadrivium and updated accordingly. They are also cheap.

The education industry is shot through with grift.

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>largely pointless lockdown

I think you forgot about the whole "pandemic" thing that happened

There is a lot of evidence that the lockdowns harmed the education of a generation of children, did massive damage to the economy, permanently shuttered thousands of small businesses, and we all still got COVID.

With the benefit of hindsight, it’s really hard to argue that lockdowns were the right call.

The lockdown were to slow the curve, not prevent people getting covid. No health official in their right mind ever thought you could stop this thing after a certain threshold, we generally had lockdowns when our hospitals were extremely close to collapse. At least where I am.

Hospitals don't actually collapse though. In the worst case scenario, they start turning patients away, and some of those people die.

Which is a disaster far beyond kids missing some school in my opinion. Kid gets in a car accident, or falls of their bike in a bad way, they're then (preventably) missing school forever.

We remember the "2 weeks" to slow the curve, but the messaging changed after 2 weeks. Schools stayed locked down long after there was any credible risk of hospitals collapsing.

Because people didn't do what they were told to do, and the government screwed it all up. Some state governors did nothing.

The US's categorical inability to implement the basic functions of a state are not an indictment of those functions

None of this changes the fact that in hindsight the lockdowns were extremely costly in several ways and proved to be mostly ineffective.

You know what's more costly? Dying.

> mostly ineffective

The United States government is mostly ineffective. Again, America's inability to do most functions of government correctly is not an indictment of those functions.

Also, it should be said, the US's prolonged mishandling of the Coronavirus pandemic had lasting economic impacts because people willingly chose to stay home to avoid getting sick, not just because occupancy limits were lowered for many businesses (what you mistakenly call a "lockdown"). Had the US enforced coronavirus restrictions better and if Americans didn't selfishly refuse to follow the rules, the economy would have taken far less damage than we chose to inflict upon ourselves.

Even China's extremely draconian zero-COVID policy lockdowns, with martial law and doors welded shut ultimately achieved very little. When I say we all got COVID anyway, I mean pretty much everyone in the entire world did.

The goal in the west was never to eliminate covid, it was to slow the spread of it. School closures are an effective means of doing so (if done pre-emptively) because schools are one of a few places where an entire towns social network crosses paths at the same time.

We have known this for over 100 years, since the Spanish flu pandemic. Denying this is simply anti-scientific and motivated by your political beliefs

I put very little faith in the US public school system pre-pandemic, I really don't think the lost schooling is that important in the long run.

> With the benefit of hindsight, it’s really hard to argue that lockdowns were the right call.

With the benefit of hindsight, the easier judgment to make is that the US has become an anti-social, low-trust society made up of people who are incapable of putting the needs of others ahead of their own interests. If you live in the US, you were never truly under "lockdown".

We also have plenty of evidence from the Spanish Flu pandemic which supports pre-emptive school closures (rather than reactive school closures) as an effective means of slowing spread

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