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The CDC Wants You to Homeschool
Over the last few weeks, I’ve heard from a trickle of parents considering homeschooling. Thanks to the CDC, that’s about to become a flood. The individuals responsible for these guidelines have, quite plainly, never encountered a child. They don’t know about how they operate or about what’s in their best interest. These recommendations are shocking and speak for themselves. A few highlights:
Cloth Face Coverings
- Teach and reinforce use of cloth face coverings. Face coverings may be challenging for students (especially younger students) to wear in all-day settings such as school. Face coverings should be worn by staff and students (particularly older students) as feasible, and are most essential in times when physical distancing is difficult. Individuals should be frequently reminded not to touch the face covering and to wash their hands frequently. Information should be provided to staff, students, and students’ families on proper use, removal, and washing of cloth face coverings.
- Note: Cloth face coverings should not be placed on:
- Children younger than 2 years old
- Anyone who has trouble breathing or is unconscious
- Anyone who is incapacitated or otherwise unable to remove the cloth face covering without assistance
- Note: Cloth face coverings should not be placed on:
Children over the age of two years old have to wear cloth face coverings? And the only way to get around it is if you’re unable to breathe or unconscious? All-day long, children are expected from the age of two to have something over their mouth and nose?
- Broadcast regular announcements on reducing the spread of COVID-19 on PA systems.
Feels a bit like an Aldus Huxley novel; not sure if it’s more 1984 or Brave New World. But wait, there’s more!
- Modified Layouts
- Space seating/desks at least 6 feet apart when feasible.
- Turn desks to face in the same direction (rather than facing each other), or have students sit on only one side of tables, spaced apart.
- Create distance between children on school buses (g., seat children one child per row, skip rows) when possible.
- Physical Barriers and Guides
- Install physical barriers, such as sneeze guards and partitions, particularly in areas where it is difficult for individuals to remain at least 6 feet apart (e.g., reception desks).
- Provide physical guides, such as tape on floors or sidewalks and signs on walls, to ensure that staff and children remain at least 6 feet apart in lines and at other times (e.g. guides for creating “one way routes” in hallways).
- Communal Spaces
- Close communal use shared spaces such as dining halls and playgrounds with shared playground equipment if possible; otherwise, stagger use and clean and disinfect between use.
- Add physical barriers, such as plastic flexible screens, between bathroom sinks especially when they cannot be at least 6 feet apart.
- Food Service
- Have children bring their own meals as feasible, or serve individually plated meals in classrooms instead of in a communal dining hall or cafeteria, while ensuring the safety of children with food allergies.
Learning in this kind of environment isn’t only counter-productive to learning itself, but it’s also deeply traumatic. Drilling into kids nothing but fear and isolation will have a lasting impact on the mental health of an entire generation. And for what? The impact of COVID-19 on children is minimal outside of an exceedingly rare complication, that the media seems determined to terrify parents about. Forcing children into schools designed to be more impersonal than prisons is deeply unjust.
These new outlines will push many parents to decide to keep their children home, and rightfully so. Any parent with the ability to keep their children out of these “redesigned” schools will be spending the summer trying to decide if they’re able to.
Published in General
Maybe someone can start marketing cheesecloth face masks. You can comply with a ridiculous law while still being able to breathe.
If you are not breathing, wearing a mask would seem to be superfluous.
I have long wanted to see the destruction of the modern education system. Didnt want it under these circumstances, but I guess I will take it.
I’m seeing lots of facemasks on Facebook saying “My Governor is an idiot” or “My Governor is almost as useless as this mask”. Perhaps “Fire Fauci” “Homeschool is the Cool School” or “Disband the Dept of Education” would be good too.
Bethany,
The risk to these children is infinitesimal. When the vaccine comes out (if it does) and if the CDC can wait until it’s actually tested, the risk to the children from the vaccine may still be higher than going with no mask and no vaccine. This is not an exaggeration.
Their attitude is what results when you mistake a cult of science for real science.
Regards,
Jim
That is going to create a surreal environment for the children. I would not have sent my kids into such a place. It would create mental illness.
I can’t imagine school districts going along with this. Where are the child psychologists promoting good mental health–that is, feeling positive toward the people in your life and trusting them?
This is absolutely crazy.
Maybe kids should wear hazmat suits. Not to mention construction hard hats and football pads during play time. Would oxygen tanks be too cumbersome? I’m good with this.
I have a friend with a four-year-old boy. She told me she is looking for a private pre-school in the fall where the kids won’t have to wear masks. In Illinois, good luck with that. This entire thing will surely traumatize a generation.
I have discovered that if I have to wear a mask to go into a store, I get a migraine. I still have one going since I left a hardware store about five hours ago. Whether it is from the constricted breathing that fogs up my glasses (yes that mask is so effective!) or a low level of anxiety from having to wear the dang thing, it doesn’t matter. If as an adult I find the whole sanitary theater a bit depressing, I cannot imagine the damage being done to a child with all the mask garbage.
I would be pretty shocked if any meaningful number of schools actually went along with this. Especially if this virus does not make a roaring comeback in the fall.
Panic makes sense when a threat is ongoing and real. It even makes some sense when a threat was recently ongoing and real, and people are worried about it coming back. But that wanes over time, and eventually, people begin to wonder what it is they are so panicked about. I would expect the same thing with respect to these drastic behavioral changes. Masks are not mandated in my city, and most people don’t wear them. There are a lot of people wearing them, but fewer people every day. I don’t really see that people are “socially distancing” much at all. The very term is an oxymoron, and we are social by our very nature.
People have short attention spans. Unless this virus is showing itself in very obvious ways, it will fade from our collective consciousness.
Your and my governors, and the media, will do their best to keep it from fading.
….at least until the election in November. Then, if they have been unsuccessful in electing someone other than the current president of the U.S.A. I’m confident some new variety of the virus or, or, wow—who know what the next BIG CRISIS will be??
Ordinarily I’d agree with you. We do tend to have a short attention span when left to our own devices. But we’re not beling left alone. Those devices are also being affected by the media and its reaction to the situation. And that possible effect on everyone’s reaction to the situation makes me a bit less sure that this is going to fade away anytime soon.
I’ve recently heard that one of the school districts in Metro Denver revealed Fall semester plans for students to be in the classroom only one day per week (CDC guidelines at work?). Students will spend the rest of their time in distance learning. It appears students in that district will be subjected to the recommended traumatization only one day per week. So, why not homeschool?
Parents need to take charge both at home and in schools. I don’t understand how we’ve allowed these radical unions to take over all our schools. The radical left see this disease as an opportunity to increase their disastrous control. We should use it to abolish the current system. Schools could take a leaf from New Zealand. New Zealanders had to abolish the educational bureaucracy because their schools were the worst in the developed world and when the British joined the EC, they were cut loose and had to finance and run their own system. They simply abolished the educational superstructure, made every school independent to be run by the parents and teachers at each school. Money went to where parents choose to send their kids and every parent could choose any school in the country. Everybody knew who the bad teachers were and parents would not send their kids to schools if they had bad teachers in subjects important to the parents. It didn’t take long for schools to get rid of the lousy teachers. New Zealand went from the bottom of the west to the top, just below Singapore in about two years. That is even more necessary in our system where we have a mix of disastrous schools and good ones in the public sector but even the good ones fail to teach basic subjects, like history.
You might as well put them all in solitary confinement while at school. Hey, aren’t liberals the ones who claim homeschooled children don’t socialize? How are public school children going to socialize if these guidelines are implemented?
Good point. If you’re already 80% of the way there, why not 100%? Even if the kids are still subjected to the public school’s socialist curriculum, hopefully Mom, Dad or a grandparent will be there to point out the lies to the student the moment they’re told . . .
The number of deaths in the United States from Covid-19 of people under the age of 20 is essentially zero.
We’ve gone completely insane.
My sister-in-law was telling me the state of NC is thinking about some variation of this for the fall. She’s an assistant principal of a high school and has listened in on the state education meetings. She said it would curl your hair to hear some of the stuff they are proposing. Divide the kids up where some go to school on Monday and Wednesday some go on Tuesday and Thursday and then “distance learn” the times in-between. WT…..? She said this was actually the most sane proposal. I didn’t want to hear the rest. For the record, she thinks the are all a bunch of bunk.
I am assuming these regulations are for home schooling and will, of course, be ignored, if not amended. The concerns about children have, thus far, been mostly about multigenerational families in which children will bring the virus home to infect elderly family members, as is alleged in Italy, There is some more recent evidence that disputes the child-carrier theory. Not all families can home school but, if possible, it is superior to public schools.
This article is appropriate for the present hysteria.
https://www.city-journal.org/the-politics-of-fear
Todays WSJ:
At 15,000 dead in New York, 8 were children under 14 years of age, 7 of those had comorbidities. The children are not in danger from the virus. The threat to the children is the CDC. What awesome stupidity.
There are reports that that SARS-CoV2 can cause a form of Kawasaki disease in children, and of course children even if in theory unaffected by the disease can still serve to spread it to others.
The pearl clutching about children being asked to wear masks is utterly ridiculous. A piece of cloth across their face! Like a scarf! Outrageous! Just tell them they’re all in ninja school now. I know I would have loved that as a kid.
Of all the various distancing strategies available to limit the spread of COVID-19 mask wearing is both the easiest and one of the most effective. If you are keen on seeing things move back to normal, having people wearing masks is the cheapest, easiest, first step to take on that path.
My six were home-schooled, three of them all the way through high school, and I’ve never regretted it. It’s easier than people think, if they have the luxury of working at home and being able to give the necessary time to the task. I miss it now that my children are grown. One of the very few positive things, for me, to come out of this Wuhan overreaction is that I’m getting to tutor young cousins in math, science, and writing. It’s very satisfying to watch them progress through the subjects.
https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-evidence-on-kids-and-covid-11590017095?mod=opinion_lead_pos1
This is consistent with the Icelandic study indicating that children rarely or never spread the virus to their parents.
For many single-parent and two-earner families, getting children back in school will be critical to their ability to return to work. Closing schools may have been a mistake; failing to reopen them certainly would be.
Henry,
Now there you go again. So rational and concerned about the problems of real people. You’ve got to keep your mind on the narrative more and remember the three most important things, virtue signal, virtue signal, and virtue signal.
It’s like you want to solve problems or something. We’ve progressed into the post-problem solving era. (Also referred to as the post-reality era.) Didn’t you get the email?
Regards,
Jim
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