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CDC's Guide to Reopening Schools and Restaurants 1:18
Editor's Note: Issac Bailey is a journalist in South Carolina and a professor of communication studies at Davidson College. He is the author of "My Brother Moochie: Restoring Dignity from Crime, Poverty, and Racism in the Southern US. His next book "Why Didn't We Riot? A Black Man in Trumpland ”will be released by Other Press this year. The opinions expressed in this comment are the author's own. See more at CNN.com/Reviews
(CNN) - America's Youth they need to return to classes in person. There is no substitute for interaction between them. This is how human beings connect.
Given what we think we know about the coronavirus, that the infection rate has slowed but, as Dr. Anthony Fauci has said, there is likely to be another wave of infection later in the year, the goal should be to reopen to late summer, an approach universities like Notre Dame and others have recently said they're taking: opening the school a few weeks earlier than usual, canceling fall break to cut student travel, and shortening the course to finish before Thanksgiving.
While that approach (and altering the traditional academic calendar) presents challenges for higher education, and, in different ways, for K-12 education, the overall goal should be to open as many schools as possible.
This is not an ideal option, but it is the right one. I say this as a teacher, pleasantly surprised that remote teaching (which I hadn't done before) was more effective than I expected when we were forced to finish classes with a physical presence in March. I say this as a father who would not have sent his two teenagers living in South Carolina to school, even if Governor Henry McMaster had ordered them to reopen in May, and as a person who is among the ranks of the immunocompromised, who must be especially careful to avoid contagion.
Having weighed all the possibilities, the loss of in-person education until 2021, or more if the optimistic schedule for finding an effective vaccine is not met; a deepening of the division of academic performance; The effects on parents and families, it seems that the best we can do is save as many lives as we can by taking safety measures seriously as well as protecting our mental health, but doing it while we are back to school.
Isolation was necessary and may be necessary again in the coming months, but we are not designed to maintain it.
I understand that any path we take carries risks. But we shouldn't throw away what we have accomplished in the past few weeks: round the spread of the virus down. The goal of continued social isolation and estrangement has been to prevent our healthcare system from being overwhelmed.
In some areas of the country, such as parts of New York City, that overflow occurred anyway. We pay a very high price in lives, with an official death toll approaching 100,000 as Memorial Day approaches, and an unemployment rate similar to that of the Depression.
Too many healthcare and other frontline workers have succumbed to covid-19; Others suffered the immense stress of witnessing so much illness and death. Still, there is increasing evidence that we have turned the corner in the first phase of this pandemic, with each state experiencing some kind of reopening.
The other goal of controlling the curve was to give us more and better options than we had in March and April.
Given what experts have said about a possible resurgence of the virus and the flu season in the fall and winter, the reopening of schools this summer may be our best opportunity for in-person teaching, invaluable, as long as there is time. . It is time to throw away the old calendar. Let's take advantage of this time to re-imagine what education can be.
For example, as biology professor Erin Bromage has pointed out, the infection is more difficult to spread outdoors, especially with adequate social distancing. That provides the opportunity for more outdoor classes, perhaps under awnings or the type of tents used at weddings, something that is much easier to do during the milder months of the year.
When I visited Ghana last summer, as part of a missionary and educational excursion where I assisted in the training of journalists, I visited some primary and secondary schools, where many classes were held under similar circumstances because so little else was available. We can learn from others who have long had to educate their children in less than ideal circumstances.
Zoom and other online teaching tools should remain options, if only to reduce the number of students in a given classroom (and the same outdoors) to maintain social distance. And at a time like this, maybe science classes should take place in a field or near a stream, Physics at a skate park, History outside a slave cabin, Engineering at the foot of a bridge.
We could find a way to get the kids there, keeping the physical distance: having parents of young children take them to school, and leaving the buses with separate seats for older students.
Let's totally reimagine where and how we carry out education in person, because the country we met in February will not return. We can see that as a tragedy and let it stop us on our way or take advantage of it as an opportunity to rethink, modify and innovate.
The virus has provided us with a terrible reminder of the racial, economic, and other divisions that have been with us for a long time. Maybe that's why it's forcing us to reimagine how things should be, even if it's kicking and screaming, away from the recent, but now ancient ways. We should never have accepted those disparities. The virus, despite all the horrors it has caused, has opened our eyes, showing why not offering better care to the most vulnerable acts to the detriment of all of us.
I understand that it is difficult to make decisions about what is best for young people, especially when uncertainty lingers in the air like the virus droplets we all fear and complicates every decision we make.
There are other dynamics going on that make it difficult to shake off that anxiety. We are led by a federal government that has overseen one of the most inept pandemic responses in the developed world, and a president who initially did not take the threat seriously because he was too concerned with how it would be perceived, and is now promoting dangerous treatments.
Groups of armed men have threatened and intimidated legislators and governors. Federal officials spent precious weeks telling us not to cover our faces, although we now know that the widespread use of face masks helps stop the spread of the virus. Some White House officials have suggested that death rates are inflated, although most analysts say the count is likely to have fallen short.
Mental health experts warn of the consequences, and advocates fear we won't be able to detect or track the rise in child abuse and domestic violence for months.
We all face difficult decisions, including those of us who are educators. But we teach students to develop a set of skills and knowledge not for moments of comfort and ease, but for moments like these, so that they can make the world a better place.
In the past few months, we have been forced to learn. Much. It is time for us to apply those lessons that we have taught our students.
Schools
