You Can't Do This In Some Other Countries department: 150-some fellow citizens rallied the other day at Patriot Plaza between the two courthouses (one smooth, one crunchy) in Towson. It was a just-above-freezing sunny Saturday, but they were there to decry the way the county is keeping schools closed during a global pandemic. In the apparent belief that jamming kids and adults together in classrooms is the cure we all seek, they marched, claiming that distance learning is detrimental to young Abernathy and Ursula.
The group was organized by "Re-Open Baltimore County Public Schools," or ROBCPS, and they were treated to a talk by Carol Vidal. She is an assistant professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Johns Hopkins, and her point is that kids only run the smallest risk of getting seriously ill if they catch the Rona, they are "paying the highest price."
Vidal proclaimed, "After months of not connecting to school, many children have lost all joy. It will affect them today and tomorrow by impacting their academic progress, job prospects and current and future mental health. And the toll will likely be greatest on special education students and minorities.”
We don't happen to have children running around our house, but from what I hear and see from friends, kids are still kids. Some kids will do well in school if they have class under a Beltway bridge, and some kids will screw up even if a tutor shows up, treats them to lunch, and, with calming incense burning and Yanni playing, delves into the causes of the Boer War.
(Leading cause: too many boers.)
Ms Vidal said she was just expressing her personal opinions on the matter, and so am I. It's my thought that we - none of us - aren't unsafe to intermingle in public without enough vaccinations to induce herd immunity.
Of course, it being a public demonstration, kids were carrying colorful placards that their parents made them carry instead of letting them play outside on a perfectly lovely day. “In the room, not Zoom,” read one sign, and another carried the plaintive cry “I want to meet my teachers.”
Notice that the parents are having the children say that they disdain the use of electronic devices for learning, and yearn to return to the classroom for... more electronic devices. They don't even have chalkboards anymore!
A ten-year-old told the crowd that he is irked because two of his classmates at Carroll Manor Elementary keep their cameras off all day long. For his parents and him, this advice: stay in your lane and don't worry about what others are doing. When he gets a job someday, it will be his accomplishments and his alone that will mark his success.
I saw on the news, a father complaining that he is tired of having his entire family around seven days a week. I seriously hope his family does not watch the news.
Here we have the words of "Matthew," who's in the fourth grade student at Mays Chapel Elementary. Matthew doesn't like being home because, even though his three older brothers are also traipsing about the house, “they don’t always want to play with me."
And of course, that situation will be remedied as soon as they throw open the doors at good old Mays Chapel.
I sympathize with both sides on this. Of course, it's not great to have the kids home learning remotely, and of course there are problems. But you know what? There are problems every day when schools are open, and maybe if we stop idealizing what we lack and make the best of what we have, we'll get along fine.
I hope that when schools do open up again, we don't hear a lot of "things were so much when the kids were learning remotely!" You know how that goes.
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