Reopening schools: A dangerous threat to children and teachers
https://socialistaction.org/2020/05/20/reopening-schools-a-dangerous-threat-to-children-and-teachers/
By Steve R. Johnson
March 16, 2020
Plans to reopen schools are being questioned by the international
working class as the novel coronavirus COVID-19 continues to spread
across the world. These plans are part of the mad rush of capitalist
nations to re-open their economies, disregarding the health of the
children and the working class of their respective societies.
The novel coronavirus has been shown to be transmissible by children,
according two recent scientific research studies. The first study was
recently published in the journal Science. It analyzed children in Wuhan
and Shanghai, China. The researchers concluded that children were about
35 percent as susceptible to COVID-19 infection as adults, but with the
large number of contacts students have daily with other children while
they are in school, they had 300 percent more chance to become infected.
The study concluded that closing schools could reduce the chance of
spread of coronavirus by 40–60 percent. The second study, led by German
virologist Christian Drosten, tested adults and children. Their research
indicated that children who tested positive are just as infectious as
adults.
That schools in the United States, Israel, Finland, France and other
Western nations are opening or are scheduling the re-opening of schools,
even when their respective nations have been unable and unwilling to
significantly reduce the number of Covid-19 deaths in their countries,
demonstrates the lack of scientific planning these nations possess in
tackling the pandemic. Additionally, it shows the intrinsic values of
these capitalist nations with regard to the care and safety of children
within their societies. Such a lack of concern for the future of
humanity cries out for universal condemnation.
Montana’s Governor Steve Bullock declared on May 7 that Montana was
‘safe’ for school reopening. Schools in Three Forks, Troy, Glasgow, and
Libby have re-opened. But the districts did not hold “school” as it is
commonly known. News reports indicate that some schools held “study
halls” with teachers present for tutoring only, while others opened for
students without computers and internet access. Although it is reported
that hand washing and hand sanitizing stations were available at one
school, it is unknown what personal protection measures had been taken
to prevent the spread of Covid-19 and to monitor their effectiveness.
The American Federation of Teachers (AFT) has support this drive. AFT
president Randi Weingarten announced the union’s “Plan to Safely Reopen
America’s Schools and Communities” wherein the AFT linked the re-opening
of the economy to the re-opening of schools. The AFT’s proposal repeated
the false notion that “To gradually reopen, we need to maintain physical
distancing until the number of new cases declines for at least 14
consecutive days.” But in the U.S. the number of daily new cases of
infection over the past two weeks, while slightly declining, has
remained in the range of 23,000 to 26,000! And this “decline” is based
on 90 percent of the population having not yet been tested.
The AFT’s criteria, essentially matched by the Trump administration’s
and major U.S. corporations, for “gradually re-opening” public schools
and businesses more generally, would undoubtedly place teachers, other
school workers, and students in unimaginable danger.
The Trump administration’s focus on re-opening schools and businesses
without having Covid-19 death and infection rates under qualitatively
greater control, and the decision of some US governors to support
Trump’s proposals, are tragic examples of the dire need for working
people to organize and fight to challenge capitalism’s inherent
subordination of human life to capitalist profits. The working class,
including teachers and the communities they serve, will undoubtedly be
in the forefront of the struggles for the socialist future.
Opening the economy and opening schools when the coronavirus is far from
under control, is tantamount to sentencing students, teachers and school
staff to years of illness and death due to capitalist greed and its
disregard for human life and suffering.
Related Articles
Unemployment Skyrockets, So Does Hunger
May 19, 2020
By BARRY SHEPPARD The Labor Department recently released figures for the
unemployment rate for April, saying that the rate was 14.7 percent, the
highest since
The “New Normal” and the Shock Doctrine
May 11, 2020
By MARTY GOODMAN
Today only 51.3% of American adults have jobs – the lowest number on
record, lower than the Great Depression. We have passed 80,000
coronavirus deaths.
The “moron” Trump’s COVID-19 capitalist cure: Back to work!
May 8, 2020
By JEFF MACKLER
“A quick succession of unhealthy and short-lived generations will keep
the labour market as well supplied as a series of vigorous and
long-lived generations.” – Karl Marx
--
___
Steven Pinker
“It's natural to think that living things must be the handiwork of a designer.
But it was also natural to think that the sun went around the earth. Overcoming
naive impressions to figure out how things really work is one of humanity's
highest callings.
[Can You Believe in God and Evolution? Time Magazine, August 7, 2005]”
― Steven Pinker