School, and the socialization that occurs there, is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. Work is generally just work, it's not like your personal development suffers if you skip it.
Some people have a gene that makes broccoli much more bitter than it is to other people. Some people find 8 hours in the office harder to take than others. I agree with your point that sometimes we have to teach children to do things that are not fun in the short term for long term gain but not everyone has the same requirements.
There are plenty of people who have found remote work much more productive and others who are really wishing they could be back in the office. I hope that employers take the pandemic as an opportunity to learn about different working styles and create more flexible working arrangements that can accommodate all types of people.
I totally agree. I'm someone who struggled at first but has since found it really good, and I think would ultimately choose the very sort of 2/3 scheme being discussed by these large companies— in office for meetings and team bonding, home for focus and flexibility.
But my parent comment was specifically with respect to the business about part of school being the socialization stuff, and if it's relevant whether or not your kids "want" that.
The reason you used to think Brussels sprouts were bitter and then “got over it” is they actually were bitter and since then they’ve been improved to taste better.
If it’s their room why would they be forced to maintain it to another person’s preferences?
My comment was about this mythical socializing that kids presumably needs so much.
Not all of them do.
School as an institution exists to free up housewives to participate in the workforce and maximize employers’ profit while preparing cheap workforce by giving a minimal education to the kids. Any benefits for the children are secondary - let’s not buy in too much into the PR.
The proof is in the pudding. Covid death rates were identical to California. I don't care about signaling, I care about results. Scientific research has consistently confirmed that school age children are responsible for a de minims fraction of Covid transmission.[1]
jfc. comparing yourself to CA? really? compare yourself with places that managed covid properly (even within the US)
also, you point at Iceland. Do you understand that the people there don’t have the generic diversity you normally have in other places? How would you feel if the parent of another kid at your school died of covid as a result of your little one passing it around?
Children should not be in in-person school until either the vaccine is widely available to children as young as 5 or SARS-CoV-2 is completely eradicated worldwide.
Since this will take a long time, the government can kill two birds with one stone by bulldozing every school in the country and building 130-story skyscrapers full of affordable housing on their sites, solving both the school question and the housing problem at the same time.
Minuscule (if we just take it at face value) is not the same as none. If a kid dies then there is a risk. Plus it depends on what I consider to be high risk. If a kid dies from preventable causes then for me that’s high risk environment.
Kids also spread the disease even we ignore the risk for them. So that means that it’s an increase of the risk for everyone else. Kids also interact with their grandparents in a lot of cultures quite frequently which is the highest risk group.
Mask decrease the probability of spreading or contracting COVID.
Masks are critical for dampening the potential for spread. The goal is not entirely to mitigate risk for the kid themselves, but of spread to their household that leads to increased likelihood of deaths.
At this point, for those households, all I have to say to them is get vaccinated or STFU.
San Francisco sits at 60% fully vaccinated with most of the Bay Area in the same range; only Solano County lags very far behind at 39% fully vaccinated.
If between now and September, we can’t get society vaccinated to the point that kids can attend school 5 days a week without a mask, then we either need to do some full on Union busting or it’s time to start leaving the unvaccinated behind and let them take their lives into their own hands. Will that suck for those that for some reason can’t? Yes, but we can’t keep society in a holding pattern for them forever.
The risks are lower, not miniscule. Some are also vulnerable to MIS-C. Masks do not stop covid for adults either, should adults stop wearing masks? (No.) Children are also potentially infectious.
I would argue that your children will learn non-verbal communication even better with masks on. It encourages alternative methods of conversing and challenges you to be a better listener and more attentive student. Honestly I don't know why we didn't do this in elementary school just for the hell of it!
What we now call "school" has barely existed for centuries, let alone millennia. Pretty sure kids were much better socialized prior to our current state of primary education.
That’s how websites like this one came about actually: “ backwards traditionalist”. Also the internet, ICE, industrial revolution, etc. We just kept doing what worked for millennia.
> learning non verbal communication is very important
You're right. There's absolutely no way kids could learn non-verbal communication if they had to wear a mask for several hours a day. It's not like literally everyone in Japan and China has been wearing face masks for 20 years.
I work in Japan. Before 2019 It wasn't even figuratively everyone, and it wasn't all the time. Wearing masks was done for many reasons sure, the most common reasons being:
-If you genuinely felt sick.
-If you wanted to avoid wearing makeup.
-If you wanted to conserve moisture/heat for your face.
-If you had some kind of social aversion.
Most of my Japanese coworkers take their masks off at their desks these days. People don't like wearing masks all day, even when it was already part of the local culture they grew up in.
I don't know how masks will affect non verbal communication. I imagine the next generation will come out of this having adapted more to detect expressions in the eyes and shifts in the corners of the face. For children with severe ASD I would expect it to seriously impede their growth in interpreting facial expressions.
