Yesterday was the first day of school for SteelyKid (8th grade) and The Pip (5th grade):
It’s been startling to realize that this is the last year in which I will be the parent of an elementary-school student, and the last year in which I will not be the parent of a high-schooler. Curse you, linear progression of time.
There’s obviously a bit of trepidation in the start of any new school year, but this one more than most. Both kids came home cheerful and optimistic yesterday, though, which is great. Last year was profoundly weird, and this one is much more back to normal— after a year of one-class-at-a-time recess, The Pip is able to play outdoors with his entire grade again, and SteelyKid’s closest friends have last names concentrated in the first half of the alphabet, so it’s very exciting to be back in the building with them. (Last year was every-other-day in-person for the middle school, with the cohorts determined alphabetically.)
The return to something closer to normal (albeit still with masks and some distancing measures— The Pip mentioned that the fifth-graders are eating in cohorts, alternating between lunch in the cafeteria and lunch in the classroom, for example) is probably better for the kids’ education and mental health (SteelyKid had a lot of trouble with the at-home days last year), but of course raises worries about everybody’s physical health. I remain cautiously optimistic, though I am back to obsessively tracking Covid stats, now via Jonah Fleishacker’s graphs and tables on Twitter:
(If you click through there’s a whole thread breaking the country up into regions, which I’ve believed from the start is the only really sensible way to look at the pandemic in the US.) We’re still on the wrong side of the rate-of-change curves, but they’re almost all flattening out significantly, and the test positivity has plateaued which suggests the effect isn’t just massively inadequate testing. I would be a lot more comfortable if the FDA would authorize vaccinations of kids in The Pip’s cohort, but we’re in a region with some of the highest vaccination rates in the state, so I think we can get through this.
It’s highly unusual for the local schools to start before Labor Day, but the way the Jewish holidays shook out this year made it necessary (we’ll be easing into the year with a couple of three-day weeks). For the same reason, Union will be starting unusually late— it’s fairly typical for classes to begin the Wednesday after Labor Day, but that’s been pushed to the following Monday to avoid Rosh Hashanah. This gives the faculty, staff, and students an extra week to see how things are playing out elsewhere, and hopefully avoid the discontent afflicting the Hamsters over their extremely cautious opening requirements. Everybody returning to campus is getting tested at least for the first few weeks— our pick-up basketball game was messed up again yesterday because they were setting up to test some of the sports teams— so next week, we should have a better idea of how things are looking.
And, of course, this whole situation continues to be afflicted by the usual issues around the public debate over Covid, which I’ve been complaining about from the very beginning of this Substack. The core problem continues to be the one identified in a NYT op-ed from over the weekend, namely that there isn’t any agreement on what the goals should be. A lot of the protracted and nasty arguments that are going on— some of them cited in that story about amherst— are really driven by a fundamental but unstated disagreement about what goals are appropriate, and specifically what level of risk is acceptable. (I would also reiterate that I think we spend too much time worrying about the opinions of unreasonable people, though to some extent those concerns may just be convenient cover.)
Unfortunately I don’t think this is a case where having the participants more clearly state their starting premises will lead to any kind of resolution, since these are generally being treated less as political positions than moral absolutes. There just isn’t any acceptance of trading off risks against rewards, leading to an entrenched stalemate of a “debate,” as with so many other aspects of the Culture Wars. It gives the whole business an air of futility— there’s just no purpose served by even participating in the discussion because there is no agreement possible as to the terms.
And, like most other Culture War arguments, the actual practical resolution of this will be hashed out in an awkwardly ad hoc manner by people who aren’t passionate partisans of either side, but who have the responsibility to do the best they can. Which means masks and lunch cohorts, but also the entire fifth grade getting on the playground for recess. We win some, we lose some, and we muddle on through.
For now, the most important thing is that both SteelyKid and The Pip were cheerful and excited on returning home yesterday, and headed out the door happily this morning. It’s a new school year, with all the promise that always holds, and all we can ever do is hope for the best.
Well, that’s ambiguous and conflicted. I sort of with I had the level of deep commitment to one side or the other that the more vigorous online arguers have, but then again, they mostly come off as assholes, even when I more or less agree, so… Anyway, if you liked this, or the stuff linked from it, here’s a button you can click to get more:
and another button to send it to others:
And if you’re like to remark about how cute my kids are, or compliment The Pip on his dope WeRateDogs mask, the comments will be open.