Reply to The Urgency of Normal

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]It’s not about kids. It’s about signaling that you aren’t Republican, kids and their experiences be damned.[/quote]

Sure, but the people who go that route are unintentionally signaling how not progressive they truly are, if they're more concerned with what other people think of them than policies that impact actual human children.[/quote]

Congratulations you just described modern American liberalism [/quote]

+1  Progressives talk a big game about equity but shut down any discussion of whether their policies actually address the injustice or actually benefit marginalized communitie. Why actually work to help children, when you can spend all of your time telling adults how terrible they are? [/quote]

So many pro-extended closure conversations on DCUM went something like this:

"We have to work to get kids back in school. This is harming the most vulnerable children permanently. There is significant evidence about the harms of the school closures that is accumulating."

"What????!?? My kids were totally fine with DL! You are a terrible parent because your kids didn't do well in DL."

"Uh, I am not talking about my kids. I'm talking about kids as a cohort, and there is troubling data."

"You just hate your kids."

It was utterly nonsensical. It was so illogical that I wondered if the pro-closure people were just trolls. They seemed totally incapable of thought beyond the four walls of their house.[/quote]

Not the direct PP you’re quoting, but one of the other ones - right, exactly.

It was either “my kids are thriving in DL” or “you’re a horrible racist for even daring to mention that DL is harming vulnerable kids.”  I saw the latter thrown around a LOT in a FB group for parents in our school system.  Painfully, I know some of these people IRL; it would have been comforting to imagine they were trolls but, alas.  [/quote]

I'm a quoted PP. I don't know how much I buy into all of the points in the toolkit, but this resource is beneficial in reframing the dialogue. As part of the progressive stubborn refusal to acknowledge real harms to all children, but especially to those most at risk, by school restrictions, the party line was to demand that those seeking a change in current school status, whether it was returning to hybrid, or in person, or lifting mask requirements, or whatever, prove that a change in position was justified. While requiring a demonstration of "safety," these voices refused to acknowledge, even slightly, the drawbacks of continued distance learning.

We are now two years into the pandemic, and these NPIs are no longer temporary measures. The harms caused by continued COVID restrictions in childrens' lives are cumulative. The default for schools is regular school with no masks. Are we at a point where we can return to that? I, personally don't think so. However, it is no longer appropriate to consider NPIs and closures as the default. Keep them in place as long as they are needed, but the decisions should be purposeful and made only when the negative consequences of having them in place have been discussed and acknowledged. That's the message. [/quote]

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