Reply to Best Post I’ve Seen in a Month on DL/Hybrid Choice

Forum Index » Fairfax County Public Schools (FCPS)

Reply to "Best Post I’ve Seen in a Month on DL/Hybrid Choice"

Subject:

Emoticons





More smilies

Text Color: Font: Close Marks

[quote=Anonymous]I’m heartened to see that many others in this forum had the same reaction that I did to the original rant that has gone viral on Facebook. I have many issues with this post as others have noted, with the biggest being his calculation of risk. Is his bad math important and germane to his thesis? Yes it is! Everything we do is about fear and risk as he says right? Especially in the times we are living in now, we are constantly evaluating the risk/benefit of everything we do. Sending our kids to school is no different and many of us have been diligently following the research on kids and COVID (to include their role in transmitting the virus) to understand that risk and make informed decisions.

Joe’s post has struck a nerve for two groups. One that identifies and finds useful his arguments and logic. And the other with a group to include myself who finds his irresponsible projection of child fatalities to be dangerous misinformation that is fueling fears and impacting parents’ decisions on their children’s education all over the country at this point, despite what actual data and studies say. Are there unknowns about kids and COVID? Yes there are but there is also no question that Joe’s calculations are wildly unreasonable given what we currently know which is quite a bit. But beyond that, Joe’s post struck me as tone deaf in other ways as well. Namely his lack of understanding that DL is not a feasible solution for many families and now thanks to him we also have to feel bad about ourselves because of it. But also because there are real disparities in our country that will be exacerbated if DL is no longer a choice but is implemented for the whole student population. (https://www.wsj.com/articles/remote-learning-pushes-americas-most-vulnerable-students-further-behind-11594826905)

I don’t know what his motivation for writing this was but it definitely appears he was trying to reach a wide audience with this. Despite what he’s said, I do believe he was trying to influence others to choose DL. Otherwise why play up the possible risk so much and write as if he was trying to persuade us all to DL? And that’s also why I think his refusal to correct his math and logic is so dangerous. He’s trying to persuade using info we all know is flawed. But I’m also skeptical that he really wanted anyone to challenge his own position as he asked us to do. Because when faced with questions about his math and research, he doubled down, refused to change anything and implied that anyone questioning him must be fine with some level of child deaths.

Oh and I just saw an article on him in the Chicago Tribune which mentions neither his affiliation or any of the bad numbers used to make his point (https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.chicagotribune.com/columns/heidi-stevens/ct-heidi-stevens-parents-weighing-hybrid-school-option-0717-20200717-p6dkjutl65hnrhvjjihgsa46m4-story.html%3foutputType=amp).

I think students and teachers not comfortable with being in school should absolutely have the DL choice. But I think it’s really terrible that this rant has proliferated all over the country, possibly caused parents to make a decision they otherwise would not have, and made a lot of parents feel guilty for not having a choice in this situation. [/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