So now we know: pandemic-related restrictions have been devastating to our young people’s school project. The Department of Education announced last week that the U. S. distance learning experiment will be conducted in the U. S. Falling across all demographic groups, losses have been greatest among minorities and the poor.
The announcement was greeted with a wonderful pinch of astonished hands, but no one was surprised. Parents who opposed school closures knew what was going to happen. In her considered new e-book “The Stolen Year,” NPR’s Anya Kamenetz explains, “The danger of young people being harmed by the prolonged closure of schools in 2020 was transparent from the start.
Harm not only learning, but also social progress and intellectual health. But as the justification for the shutdown evolved from “two weeks to slow the spread” to a number of goals, those of us who raised questions about this strategy— adding that the most disadvantaged young people would suffer to the fullest—found that our email inboxes were flooded with angry missives from readers accusing us of ignoring science.
However, “science” is not transparent from the start. In 2013, for example, the British Medical Journal published a review of more than 2500 studies on the effect of school closures on the spread of influenza. The authors conclude: “School closures appear to have the potential to reduce influenza transmission, but the heterogeneity of the available data means that the optimal strategy (p. e. g. , the ideal duration and timing of closure) remains uncertain.
A 2009 article in Health Affairs is candid about the limits of expert knowledge: “In the new political arena, there is no agreement on whether school closures would do more harm than harm to the entire population and whether the repercussions would outweigh the potential benefits for youth and surrounding adult communities.
Certainly, the 1918 flu pandemic and early school closures helped slow the rate of spread. But those shutdowns regularly lasted two to eight weeks.
And yet, there was a public fitness “consensus” that schools should remain closed until. . . until. . . well, the goal seemed variable.
At the beginning of the pandemic, I heard a public fitness “expert” proclaim on TV that no measure is excessive if it saves a single life. That does not even constitute a serious argument, let alone the training of an educational discipline. But the host treated the request as if it were sacred scripture.
In his book, Kamenetz laments that those who knew best did not raise their voices loud enough. A more realistic way to explain the point is that those who knew the most were drowned or even accused of spreading false information. a party in a debate about a factor of public importance predictably leads to bad politics. And, in the jargon of the moment, it is also a risk to democracy, which feeds only on open disagreements.
Perhaps the educational losses due to distance learning have been justified if it could be shown that the practice saved the lives of young people. But it is not possible. A study published in The Lancet in February showed that COVID-related deaths among school-age children have been remarkably low around the world. How weak? In 5-year-olds, to take just one example, the mortality rate from infection averages around 0. 0024%, or 2 in 100,000.
Certainly, contrary to some reports at the beginning of the pandemic, young people can transmit the disease to adults, due to our understandable tendency to hug our young children when they are sick. But at least among adults under 65 who live with young people. , the cumulative threat of hospitalization is low and there is no build-up in the likelihood of COVID-related death.
Here’s the British Medical Journal in 2021: “The emerging consensus is that schools appear to be transmission enhancers, and that cases in schools only reflect prevalence within the local community. “
In other words, even though we adults are self-centered enough to punish our children to protect us, school closures don’t seem to affect us much.
I’m not saying a shutdown wasn’t necessary; I’m saying we’ve never had a serious public debate about quantity and duration. Kamenetz notes that the United States was “the only rich country that in no way prioritized reopening its schools, wasting more cumulative days of learning than any other. “a fact we deserve to be ashamed of. In a series of vignettes, he lists the harms suffered by other young people as a result of our poor decisions. If blaming someone is important, choose your favorite villain: Donald Trump, the CDC, the teachers’ unions, the media, the reds or the blues. And when we finish this exercise, we can focus on what matters: how to avoid making the same mistakes again.
Here’s my suggestion of where to start: Next time, let’s be motivated by concern for the unknown. Let’s diminish the opinion of any expert who cites any data. Most importantly, let’s accept that what we want when we have doubts is a solid, open conversation. Maybe then we will find a way to get through the next pandemic without punishing our children.
Stephen L. Carter is a bloomberg opinion columnist. A law professor at Yale University, he is the author, most recently, of “Invisible: The Story of the Black Lawyer Who Shot America’s Most Powerful Gangster. “