Tuesday, July 28, 2020
Baseball and schools
[pictured above per the NY Times: the Miami Marlins give each other coronavirus after their first game last week]
The President is pushing for schools to re-open next month in the middle of the coronavirus epidemic. This is probably a bad idea. Have you been to a high school lately? I have-- it's pretty much impossible to enforce any semblance of safe conduct in a pandemic. Kids are everywhere, jammed in the halls, running around, etc.
So, we got a pretty good preview of this in Major League Baseball. MLB decided to have an abbreviated season with limited travel. They got four days into it before the pandemic came for them-- the Miami Marlins reported that (already!) 12 of their 30 players and two staff members had tested positive for coronavirus.
MLB has tremendous resources and a small group of people, and they could not pull it off. Why do people imagine that their local public high school will do better?
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Why do people imagine that their local public high school will do better? Our President does because he wants people to believe that the virus has run its course and he won't be penalized at the ballot box for his shoddy -- some say criminal -- handling of it.
But for the rest of us - and I do mean all of us - we believe it because we so desperately want things to return back to normal. At least initially we believe it. Then for most of us, common sense kicks in and we realize there's no way to keep students and teachers safe from COVID-19 infection with in-person instruction. School as we know it can't be held right now. Those school districts who have in-person instruction will see a spike in COVID-19 cases among teachers, administrative staff and students. It will happen.
I feel surreal. I'm watching people running towards a cliff that they know is there, yet they continue to run. And I can't stop them.
But for the rest of us - and I do mean all of us - we believe it because we so desperately want things to return back to normal. At least initially we believe it. Then for most of us, common sense kicks in and we realize there's no way to keep students and teachers safe from COVID-19 infection with in-person instruction. School as we know it can't be held right now. Those school districts who have in-person instruction will see a spike in COVID-19 cases among teachers, administrative staff and students. It will happen.
I feel surreal. I'm watching people running towards a cliff that they know is there, yet they continue to run. And I can't stop them.
Exactly, Jill!
We WANT things to be better. But that doesn't make it so. And middle schools and high schools just are not built for what needs to happen to keep people safe.
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We WANT things to be better. But that doesn't make it so. And middle schools and high schools just are not built for what needs to happen to keep people safe.
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