[ExI] schools, was: RE: Even India and Haiti do it better

[Dylan Distasio]

The irony here is that schools are probably the last thing that should have
ever been closed based on both the economic hardships foisted on lower
income families as a result and the fact that the risk of death for those
age groups is close to zero.

I'm more concerned with the fact that unemployment is now at 14.7% in the
US, and that for many low income employees, it now makes sense to keep
collecting unemployment due to the fact that they are getting paid more to
sit at home than they are paid to return to work.   The entire stimulus
package has been a disaster between eliminating ACTUAL income as a factor
in the unemployment payments and the fact that there were few conditions
attached to the PPP loan program to prevent anyone who applied from taking
advantage of it.

There's a real possibility of a lost decade in the US now caused entirely
by an over-reaction to CV-19, not the actual impact of the virus itself.

On Fri, May 8, 2020 at 10:48 AM spike jones via extropy-chat <
extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:

>
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> *From:* spike at rainier66.com <spike at rainier66.com>
>
> >…Are there any other ideas?  If economies open up and Covid cases go way
> up, or if economies don’t open up in spite of the risk, we will need other
> ideas, lots of them.  Spike
>
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> Regarding ideas, I am soliciting ideas on other stuff besides economies.
> I have a pretty good idea how economies will go after hearing how much
> trouble the California government is in: they will realize that shutting
> down an economy for an extended period is ruinous as well as Covid.  The
> governor (and the other 49 governors) will stand down soon methinks, even
> knowing it is very risky, for they already know and have seen what happens
> in the alternative.  They are sailing between Scylla and Charybdis.
>
>
>
> What isn’t clear is public education.  We are doing remote learning here,
> and it is working for some, not at all for others.  The schools have been
> closed for the remainder of the academic year, but the plan is to return in
> August.  If Covid cases shoot way up (certainly a plausible scenario) we
> can easily imagine the governor would close the schools but not the
> businesses (this is my prediction of what will happen.)  The schools can
> pretend they are still operational, and they are… for some of the
> students.  Academically the rich get richer, the poor get nothing (because
> they don’t show up.)
>
>
>
> If anyone wants to toss out ideas, please do.  I am on an evaluation board
> offering the district superintendent a parents’-eye-view of remote
> learning.  The board may not like what I have to say, but I will tell the
> truth: remote learning works well for some, but the best bet for actual
> learning is to forget watching their classroom lectures on Zoom and just go
> to Khan Academy: smarter lecturer, better IT, better everything.
>
>
>
> What if the caseload in the fall is a lot higher than now and we have
> enough test kits but we find that doesn’t help much because the virus has
> already spread before the first symptoms show up?  Or what if it is about
> the same as now, or only a little lower: they would still need to keep the
> schools closed, ja?  The shops and businesses will need to stay open for
> the most part, the ones which haven’t folded by then.  But schools have the
> option of closing.
>
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> Ideas?
>
>
>
> spike
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