Quote:
Originally Posted by CliffFletcher
Those might be your personal observations. But the studies on the impact of school closures and remote learning on the welfare of children cite:
* The loss of a safe space for children from distressed households.
* The effects of social isolation during crucial stages of development.
* The long-term effects of learning loss, now estimated to be one-third to half of a school year in rich countries.
* The disproportionate effect of all of the above on disadvantaged and less educated households.
None of this is a surprise to the paediatrics associations the world over that implored governments not to close schools. Now that we have data showing the harm has been even greater than the experts feared, hopefully we will recalculate the tradeoffs the next time we’re faced with a serious contagion. For instance, we should prepare contingencies to keep schools open even when 25 per cent of teachers are absent.
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I'm repeating myself from my earlier posts, but what you said is true of the March 2020 to June 2020 school shutdown. However, Azure was upset with school shutdowns AFTER December of 2020, to which I pointed out that is was generally limited to a few weeks in 2 years. Yes, some schools closed due to staff shortages and outbreaks, but these were generally limited and short-lived shutdowns. So, my overarching point was: other than the initial March 2020 to June 2020 shutdown, the government did not close schools for more than a week here or there. These are not significant closures and would not be significant towards any of the points you made. Again, if closing schools for 2 weeks due to Covid in 2021 is that harmful then we as a society seriously need to look at getting rid of Spring Break, Summer Break and Christmas Break, because they would likely have all of the same impacts.
So, it would appear that in Alberta we are aware of the issues and did our best to not close schools after the early and unknown days of the pandemic. I'm not talking about schools or impacts in other countries, because I live in Alberta and reference and care about what happens here.
So, why are some people still getting mad about this? We've learned that prolonged shutdowns are negative, and we havent done one in 2 years, yet here we with some people still upset that it happened? I'm seriously confused. Going back to what Sliver said a few post back, of course the pandemic was bad for kids and their learning. It was terrible for lots of people across our society. The early days of the pandemic were wild and unknown, and I'm hard pressed to place blame on any government for their response during those first 4-6 months.