This week Doug Ford revealed his back to school plan. He's not getting high marks. Bruce Arthur writes:
The safe care of our children is a fundamental social compact. So many parents have been stretched to breaking while trying to work from home and take care of their children. Society and economies are built around child care. Parents want to send their kids back to school, if it’s safe.
And while children suffer far less from this disease, mercifully, the science is moving towards the conclusion that they have an equal ability to spread it. Which has potential implications for school staff, parents, and the inevitable rings of spreading contagion. And a lot of parents love their kids, and so are anxious.
Unfortunately, Doug Ford is selling this plan with all the reassurance and élan of a bear driving a garbage truck. It’s not great.
“Let’s give this a shot, at least,” said Ford, as part of his daily media address. “We’re going to give it everything we can, and make sure that we move forward, and pray to god that everyone’s safe. That’s what I want. Just the kids to be safe.”
The ugly truth is -- as Dr. Anthony Fauci reminded Americans a few days ago -- this is an experiment. And kids and teachers are the guinea pigs. Even the experts don't know what's going to happen:
“This is what they call a wicked problem,” said Dr. Isaac Bogoch, an infectious diseases specialist at the University of Toronto. “There’s no right answer. We can talk about lower class sizes, we can talk about masks, we can talk about dumping in money, we can talk about policies, but none of it is going to eliminate the risk.
“Even with 15 kids in a class, are you going to be able to enforce physical distancing? Not a chance ... (but) I think there is a lot of attention, rightfully so, on trying to get these class sizes to be smaller, because it probably will help to some extent. Yes, from a strictly epidemiological standpoint, the smaller the ratio, the better. The fewer kids, the better. But the question is, how much more? I don’t know the answer.”
I suspect that, for the foreseeable future, online education will be the norm. But there are lots of kids who won't do well online. Either they don't have the access, the equipment, or the temperament to succeed in the enterprise.
As is the case everywhere, the pandemic has underscored the inequalities that exist in the way we have organized things. And the ones who suffer most are those at the bottom of the ladder.
Image: dreamstime.com
