Reopening of schools

Pondering wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

Of course it's unfortunate for the children who do catch covid, but is all this necessary over a virus that has impacted 0.05% of the population?

The concern isn't just children catching it it is children bringing it home with them. Also I have to ask did they do general population testing or did they only test people who were symptomatic or had been in contact with someone symptomatic?

That is a very good question, and unfortunately Sweden did not collect enough data that would have helped answer to some of those questions. If you take a look at the infection curves, as of today Sweden's curve is flat, Finland's curve is on its way up.

Pondering wrote:

What you want is for "the left" to adopt this as an infringement on civil rights but the grand majority of us recognize this as a health crisis that disproportionately impacts people living in poverty and essential workers physically not just economically.

Why should I consult with the majority before I decide what I think or how I feel about something?

Pondering wrote:

If there is anything good to come of this it will be in the form of pharmacare and basic income which will benefit people well after Covid is gone. We see an opportunity to accelerate the switch to a green sustainable economy.

I don't know why you think this is on the agenda at all. Last year Australia re-elected a right-wing government in the back pocket of the fossil fuel industry. I have seen nothing to sugges that this is on the agenda of the Conservative government in the UK. It certainly will not be addressed by whomever wins the Presidential elections this Fall. It is not on the agenda of the Liberal government, which has also given public money to fossil fuel companies. Furthermore, the Trudeau government is preparing to wind down the CERB. The Conservatives have a reasonable chance of forming a government in the next election, and basic income is certainly not on their agenda. These items have been highlighted by the NDP, but they will have no sway as a third party in a majority government, which is a very realistic possibility in the next election.

Pondering wrote:

Lifting restrictions so more people can die is an unlikely position for "the left".

Public health is a vastly complex thing. You can make an argument that the measures implimented have cost lives with things like delayed cancer and heart screenings, victims of domestic violence, drug overdoses, suicides, and large scale famines in Africa and Asia. Taking everything into account, to say that "more people will die" if restrictions are lifted is, at best, speculative.

Pondering wrote:

Working from home exploded for middle and upper class populations. As the economy opens up many companies and workers have decided working from home has many benefits and are not intending to ever return to the old model of everyone coming to the office.

This has been a logistical nightmare for many employers and employees alike.

Pondering wrote:

Universities will continue to do a lot of distance learning.

Any qualified educator will tell you that the academic instruction portion of learning is a small part. There are so many aspects of learning that come from collaboration with others, not to mention the soft skills like social schools. To say nothing of the benefits from on-campus social clubs and other chances to meet with people. I think a largely distance-ed model will make for a much poorer experience all around.

University of Michigan Graduate Students Vote to Extend Strike as Opposition Erupts at Campuses Throughout the US

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/14/umic-s14.html

"...The strike has garnered immense support from undergraduate students, Residential Advisors, faculty, university staff, local workers and high school students, as well as students and workers from campuses across the country. The groundswell of support is an indication of the immense opposition that exists in the working class to the reckless drive to reopen schools and workplaces as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep through the country.

The result of reopening campuses for in-person learning, as was widely predicted, is producing a catastrophe. On Sunday, the State of Wisconsin reported a new record of 1,582 cases, driven largely by the reopening of schools and the broader impact. The campaign to reopen schools and universities is part of the ruling class's policy of 'herd-immunity' - that is, to allow the virus to spread without restraint.

This policy, spearheaded by Trump but implemented by Democrats and Republicans in states throughout the country, has already led to almost 200,000 deaths in the US. The University of Washington now estimates that the number of deaths by the end of the year could rise to above 200,000..."

Aristotleded24 wrote:

  If you take a look at the infection curves, as of today Sweden's curve is flat, Finland's curve is on its way up. 

However, on a per-capita basis, Sweden far outpaces its Scandinavian neighbors in COVID deaths, with 567 deaths per million people compared with Denmark's 106 deaths per million, Finland's 59 deaths per million, and Norway's 47 deaths per million. The Swedish figure is closer to Italy's 581 deaths per million.....

"In Sweden, the strategy has led to death, grief, and suffering," they wrote. "On top of that, there are no indications that the Swedish economy has fared better than in many other countries. At the moment, we have set an example for the rest of the world on how not to deal with a deadly infectious disease."

Swedes have been asked to keep their distance in public, refrain from non-essential travel, and work from home when possible. Gatherings of more than 50 people are also banned. People age 70 and over are advised to stay away from others as much as possible.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

  I don't know why you think this is on the agenda at all. Last year Australia re-elected a right-wing government in the back pocket of the fossil fuel industry. I have seen nothing to sugges that this is on the agenda of the Conservative government in the UK. It certainly will not be addressed by whomever wins the Presidential elections this Fall. It is not on the agenda of the Liberal government, which has also given public money to fossil fuel companies. Furthermore, the Trudeau government is preparing to wind down the CERB. The Conservatives have a reasonable chance of forming a government in the next election, and basic income is certainly not on their agenda. These items have been highlighted by the NDP, but they will have no sway as a third party in a majority government, which is a very realistic possibility in the next election. 

First, we are not in Australia or the UK (or the US for that matter) Top issue at the Liberal convention in November is Basic Income not that the government can be forced to adopt it. Pharmacare has been in their campaigns. Trudeau has spoken loudly of the opportunity this presents to use recovery to green the economy. He needs NDP support to stay alive so he wants to make the NDP looks bad if they vote against the throne speech because the Conservatives and Bloc will vote it down.

85% of Canadians were not happy about the purchase of TMX. The mood is "we bought you a damn pipeline and you are still not happy". Not "give the oil industry more money".

The Conservatives have virtually no chance of winning the next election nevermind a majority. The election of O'Toole over MacKay, the strong support given the social conservative wing, and the nose dive of the oil industry make it next to impossible that O'Toole will come up with any policy that can compete with the goodies Trudeau will be offering.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

 Public health is a vastly complex thing. You can make an argument that the measures implimented have cost lives with things like delayed cancer and heart screenings, victims of domestic violence, drug overdoses, suicides, and large scale famines in Africa and Asia. Taking everything into account, to say that "more people will die" if restrictions are lifted is, at best, speculative.  

You have yet to convince a single person that the negative health impacts of the lockdown come even close to the deaths from covid without taking any precautions. Nor have you proven that lifting health measures would save those people. There is zero chance that we are going "back to normal" within a year even if all restrictions are lifted. Many school bus drivers are not going back. Same goes for teachers.

Aristotleded24 wrote:

  This has been a logistical nightmare for many employers and employees alike. 

For some absolutely. We don't know what percentage will go back to the office towers. There is no denying that it has been a catalyst speeding up what was already happening.

NDPP wrote:

University of Michigan Graduate Students Vote to Extend Strike as Opposition Erupts at Campuses Throughout the US

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/09/14/umic-s14.html

"...The strike has garnered immense support from undergraduate students, Residential Advisors, faculty, university staff, local workers and high school students, as well as students and workers from campuses across the country. The groundswell of support is an indication of the immense opposition that exists in the working class to the reckless drive to reopen schools and workplaces as the COVID-19 pandemic continues to sweep through the country.

The result of reopening campuses for in-person learning, as was widely predicted, is producing a catastrophe. On Sunday, the State of Wisconsin reported a new record of 1,582 cases, driven largely by the reopening of schools and the broader impact. The campaign to reopen schools and universities is part of the ruling class's policy of 'herd-immunity' - that is, to allow the virus to spread without restraint.

This policy, spearheaded by Trump but implemented by Democrats and Republicans in states throughout the country, has already led to almost 200,000 deaths in the US. The University of Washington now estimates that the number of deaths by the end of the year could rise to above 200,000..."

As of today, the death count in the US is close to 200 000, so unfortunately it's quite likely they will reach that number well before that.

In terms of guesses, is the University of Washington using the same estimation methodology that came up with the ridiculous 96 million cases in the US that was circulating around earlier this year?

Pondering wrote:

Aristotleded24 wrote:

  If you take a look at the infection curves, as of today Sweden's curve is flat, Finland's curve is on its way up. 

However, on a per-capita basis, Sweden far outpaces its Scandinavian neighbors in COVID deaths, with 567 deaths per million people compared with Denmark's 106 deaths per million, Finland's 59 deaths per million, and Norway's 47 deaths per million. The Swedish figure is closer to Italy's 581 deaths per million.....

"In Sweden, the strategy has led to death, grief, and suffering," they wrote. "On top of that, there are no indications that the Swedish economy has fared better than in many other countries. At the moment, we have set an example for the rest of the world on how not to deal with a deadly infectious disease."

Swedes have been asked to keep their distance in public, refrain from non-essential travel, and work from home when possible. Gatherings of more than 50 people are also banned. People age 70 and over are advised to stay away from others as much as possible.

That Sweden got a few things wrong in their covid response is obvious. Even Dr. Tegnell has admitted mistakes. I find it refreshing that someone in that position of power and with his expertise would admit that. It beats the intransigence of the medical officers of health we are up against in this country.

Almost Half of UK Coronavirus Infections in Schools, Colleges and Universities

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/05/surv-o05.html

"...Figures from the latest Public Health England's COVID-19 epidemiology surveillance summary show that educational settings now account for 45 percent of all positive cases in the UK. This is the highest level of infection of any sector of society. The Boycott Unsafe Schools web site has produced a valuable map showing the evidence of infections at over 2,000 schools from every corner of the country..."

Youth Who Led Montreal High School Strike Against Unsafe School Reopening Speaks Out

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2020/10/07/mont-o07.html

"We want the government to stop using us like guinea pigs..."

72 new cases in Ontario schools today. For a number far fewer (10-12 cases), Chingdao, China is testing 9 million citizens in 4 days to isolate and eliminate the virus from their city. Meanwhile, New Zealand has already sold 47,000 tickets to a football match against Australia on Sunday. In both places COVID is crushed whenever and wherever it is found. Here our children and their loved ones are in constant danger of infection. Citizens go along for the ride. Politicians lie that they are working on it.

Parkdale Parents and Teachers Rally For Smaller Class Sizes, Safer Schools

https://www.cp24.com/news/parkdale-parents-and-teachers-rally-for-smalle...

"Teachers and parents united in Toronto's Parkdale neighbourhood Wednesday morning to rally for safer schools and smaller class sizes amid a second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic. Dozens of parents, children and teachers marched along the streets of Parkdale chanting 'What do we want? Safe schools. When do we want them? Now!' Parent Andrea Mcphail says the province is not helping school boards enough to create a sufficient plan to combat the virus..."

This isn't working. Why COVID-19 numbers are rising.

Why students belong in class and why all forms of digital and remote learning need to go:

Quote:

Lockdown in the United States has been miserable on several levels. First, it has led to our physical schools being shuttered for a full year. We have been forced to teach entirely remotely. This has been terrible for the students and downright awful for me. Education under capitalism is an exercise in indoctrination and preparing future workers for accepting their continual exploitation at their work, but the one element of my job I actually believed in was the relationships I formed with students and their families. Also, working and talking with my colleagues in person made the job less soul-crushing.

...

I also began to see a future where the working class was being physically separated and atomized in a process that looked to me like ‘reverse enclosure’. I worry that this physical separation, where all our work is eventually done remotely (which I believe is where this is headed), may actually turn the working class effectively into a peasant class (or gig workers). We will still be exploited, but no longer a class that understands itself or experiences itself as a collective class. To me, this takes the Marxist notion of working class revolution off the table, making me wonder if this is part of what is in operation right now. Nevertheless, I know the capitalists are wanting to separate us, and I know that is part of their plan for accumulating profits and competing even more aggressively with each other for a share of those profits in the coming decade. All of this, by definition, comes at the expense of the working class unless we oppose all aspects of the changes being implemented today.

...

I think we need to get back to our source of power – our workplace and centers where we congregate to do work – immediately and begin figuring out how we can stop what is coming. The remote learning experience we are going through right now is not a momentary mirage of a world trying to escape COVID. What we are witnessing and participating in (as either educator or student) is the future of education that is preparing future workers for what work will be like in the coming years: remote, on a screen, mediated through data flow and transmission, overseen, monitored and directed by AI. Students are experiencing education (seperated, individualized, isolated, controlled and obscure) as they will experience their future work.

Participating in remote learning today isn’t ‘safer’, it’s actually far more dangerous to all our futures. It means our lives will be more separated, more surveilled, more scrutinized and more controlled than ever before. Physical schools will be replaced with laptops and drop-in centers. Teachers will be replaced with screens and AI. Education itself will be a lifelong chase, not of learning, but of job skills so each worker can compete in a global labor market where ever-centralized capitalist centers get their pick of the litter to screen for and exploit workers not as a class but as an isolated worker connected via a screen.

...

At the same time, capitalists are using all the fear they have whipped up to push for a return to school experience that will emphasize masks, social distancing, mass vaccinations and PCR testing, and of course, hybrid learning. Many people will mistake hybrid learning as a ‘transition’ back to full in-person learning at a future date (2023, 2024). That is false. Hybrid learning is the transition state to full online learning which is not yet workable for the capitalists but COVID made possible to begin the shift to the ‘experiment’ in education we’ve gone through this last year.

In a nutshell, education and educational workers have been smashed this last year, and we don’t even know it happened. Our situation, in my opinion, is dreadful.

...

Fundamentally, we have to remind ourselves that our project is a collective one and that any attempt to separate workers instituted by the capitalist class must be seen as an attack on our class and resisted as such. We will not be able to wage ANY sort of resistance to what is being instituted through the Fourth Industrial revolution behind our laptops. No matter how big our virtual meetings, we have to understand those meetings are in a controlled, corporate space that can be shut down by them any time. No fundamental change will come through participation in those spaces. So our starting point must be to challenge the mainstream narrative that is being used to terrify us of each other and then actually reassemble at work or other physical spaces to figure out what we do to try and turn the tide.

At schools, I think that means ripping up the Silicon Valley software and hardware infrastructure that is being used to dismantle in-person learning and prepare future workers for an all-remote experience and to use the work of current educators to lay the groundwork for replacing us with AI. In my opinion, that means uprooting the entire digital apparatus that’s in place and returning education to a physical, sensory experience of the world and in relationship with each other. How deep does the uprooting have to go? I am not sure, but I would say that the fight is not just about ‘returning’ to our pre-COVID educational system (that system has always been about exploitation), but seeing our schools as a center of struggle against the machinations of the Capitalists trying to reorganize all of society to maximize profits by maximizing their data collection on us.

This is troubling:

Quote:

New York Gov. Andrew Cuomo tapped the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, the powerful philanthropic player in the education space, to work with state education officials to reimagine the K-12 system when schools reopen in the fall.

"Bill Gates is a visionary in many ways, and his ideas and thoughts on technology and education he's spoken about for years," Cuomo said Tuesday during his daily briefing at which he announced the partnership. "But I think we now have a moment in history where we can actually incorporate and advance those ideas."

...

As it stands, schools are closed for more than 55 million children because of the pandemic, and the majority of governors, including Cuomo, have ordered them shut for the rest of the academic year. States and school districts have a monumental task before them as they begin to consider what learning will look like in classrooms when they reopen, including, among many other things, how to ensure smooth transitions to remote learning should new outbreaks occur and close schools again.

Many school districts have been slow to transition to distance learning, crippled by the number of students without internet access or digital learning devices. Some have even thrown in the towel for the remainder of the school year. Most are using video conferencing platforms like Zoom or Google Meets to hold daily lessons or check in on students individually, but attendance is spotty and without time to develop a well thought-out plan to shift from in-person to virtual curriculum, most educators expect major learning losses.

Cuomo said Tuesday that by partnering with Gates the state will be able to understand how it can better capitalize on technology to improve education for students, especially how it can be most effective for English learners and students with disabilities.

First off, this guy should be in jail after what he did with the nursing homes, especially after left-wing partisan Democrats villified anyone who so much as left their house to gather with anyone outside was a monster for killing old people.

There is a great deal of money for tech companies to make to offer remote education platforms. This goes beyond local teachers delivering content online. I can easily see educational companies developoing learning packages and curriculum materials that can be sold to school districts that the students complete without ever having to interact with any teachers. Imagine chatting remotely with a "consultant" or with an AI chatbot, or having the AI mark the children's work. Much cheaper than having to pay actual teachers. I could easily see cash-strapped school districts going for something like this. Or, what if there is a labour dispute with state, provincial, or local teachers? What's to stop the district from contracting to a service like this for a 2 or 3 month period in an attempt to play hardball and break the teacher's unions? After being one of the lead voices calling for school closures and remote learning for over a year, do you think teachers unions are going to have any credibility with the public if they try to push back on a scheme like this? Do you think parents who had to quit jobs, make arrangements to work from home, or have their children be watched by grandparents while the children work are going to have any sympathy for teachers, when it's the teachers unions that advocated for such closures?

Andy Libson is right. Teachers unions are shooting themselves in the foot over the long-term in order to experience a temporary feeling of safety. Remember that children have a next-to-zero chance of experiencing a bad outcome from covid, teachers as a professional group are at no greater risk of covid than other occupations, and both groups are more likely to be injured or killed on the way to or from school than from any infection they pick up while there. What do these teachers think they are doing?