Reply to My 2nd grader’s teacher intends to mask all year

Forum Index » Montgomery County Public Schools (MCPS)

Reply to "My 2nd grader’s teacher intends to mask all year"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]There is no clear evidence that masks impact children’s speech or social skills. It’s just something that gets repeated because anti-maskers need a justification. [/quote]

False.  There is PLENTIFUL research on the impact of masks on communication; and pre-existing research on the role of faces and learning social skills/emotions/language.  Beyond that, masks are an invasive intervention.  It's just not true that you can mandate any intervention as long as there is not "clear evidence" against it.  (Or whatever evidentiary standard you're using; it's a moving goal post.) Likewise claim that "blind kids learn to speak just fine, masks are not a problem!" is false.  It's well known that visually impaired kids need specialized instruction for acquiring language and social skills because of the missing nonverbal cues.

I'm not even going to post the research here because there's so much. Anyone who is interested can search on Google Scholar.   [/quote]

Link to ONE peer reviewed study or article that says masking at school/daycare causes or worsens speech development.  ASHA has clearly said there is no evidence that masking delays or prevents speech development. Parents do not mask at home with their children and that is where the majority of their language is acquired. [/quote]

There are REAMS of papers on how masking may impair emotion recognition and communication.  I TOLD you to google it, but since you will not:

https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&q=masks+communication&btnG=
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&q=masks+speech+delay+covid&btnG=
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&q=visual+face+processing+masks+language+acquisition&btnG=
https://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&as_sdt=0%2C47&q=covid+masks+communication+impairment&btnG=

Notably, the DCUM-favorite speech disorder diagnostician Dr Camarata wrote about it:  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/0194599820978247

ASHA even though it does not want to fully acknowledge it, covertly acknowledges that masks impair therapy delivery.  (As they must - how nonsensical would they be otherwise?)

"Here are some examples of how masks can negatively affect services:

Increased difficulty in understanding speech: Masks attenuate sound by 3–12 dB and result in low-pass filtering of high-frequency sounds, making it more difficult to understand speech and some higher-pitched voices (Goldin et al., 2020). Listening to masked speech can be especially hard for people with hearing loss.
Reduced discrimination of speech signal among competing noise: For example, reduced discrimination may occur in the presence of traffic or noisy yard work like lawn mowing.
Reduced intelligibility of the wearer’s speech: Listeners may perceive speech as being muffled or lower in volume.
Loss of visual cues: Masks remove the ability to speechread and see facial expressions; both abilities augment communication.
Increased difficulty of verbal communication: Speaking and understanding language while wearing a mask can be hard for people with communication problems like aphasia and voice problems.
Reduced ability to provide appropriate cues to the patient/client/student: Masks can reduce one’s ability to provide communication cues—for example, in the case of speech sound production.
Non-compliance of mask wearing: Masks can be uncomfortable for young and school-aged children and for people who wear hearing aids or cochlear implants. Noncompliance with mask use can also be an issue for those with cognitive or sensory deficits."

https://www.asha.org/practice/using-masks-for-in-person-service-delivery-during-covid-19-what-to-consider/

Are there double-blinded RCT on masking 2 year olds?  No, there are not, because prior to covid it would have been completely insane to suggest such a think and an IRB NEVER would have approved it.  Post-covid, in the US, it is still career suicide in some quarters to even suggest this research and so it won't get funded or performed.

So we're left with a few main principals.

1.  You don't get to just impose bodily restrictions like masking based on "we don't have any evidence it is bad for kids."  You need to have a MUCH higher standard than that to change the status quo.
2.  You must ACCURATELY weight the costs and benefits, including taking into account the very persuasive studies that show masking doesn't work to stop covid in schools.

[/quote]

Options

	Disable HTML in this message
	Disable BB Code in this message
	Disable smilies in this message

Review message

Search Recent Topics Hottest Topics