No Such Thing as a Totally Safe School

August 17, 2020 By Pete McArdle

To regain any sense of normalcy during the time of Coronavirus, we’ll need our kids back in school. They need to be back there, and their parents really need their kids to be back there. Like yesterday.  However, the teachers unions and their Democrat masters – or is it the other way around? – hesitate to re-open the schools. While a cynic might think they’re doing this for nakedly political reasons, educators and Dems claim they’re just worried about safety, and of course, the children.

The safety of the children comes first, they say, batting their eyes for the cameras. And until it’s safe, doggone it, kids and teachers will simply have to suffer with “Remote Learning.” Or as I call it, “Not Remotely Learning.”  Sadly, there is no such thing as safety. It’s just an illusion, albeit a useful one that keeps us from being paralyzed by fear. If you stop and think about all the dangers your kids face in a typical school day, why, you’d never let them out of the house.

How do kids get to school? Walking is one way, but when you read accounts of missing children, “last seen walking to (or from) school” is an all too common detail. And despite all the crossing guards in the world, a certain number of children are injured or killed simply crossing the street. While riding a bike may lessen the risk of abduction, it carries the same risk of getting hit by vehicles and the added risk of falls and their attendant injuries.........

Learning, which is absolutely essential to a productive and fulfilling life, requires us to take certain risks; catching COVID-19 is one of them. A rational approach would be to open the schools and only isolate those students and teachers at risk (the elderly, the morbidly obese, the medically compromised). But these days, rationality seems to be in short supply among politicians and educators...............  To Read More....