CBS notes that March 2020 was unusual for its lack of school shootings. Yay for homeschooling, the only way to keep the kiddos safe! Snopes was on the job immediately, crowing "Trump halts school shootings!" Just kidding, they gave the CBS report a sniffy "Most false" rating, a/k/a "Needs context," which is Snopesian for "inconveniently true, but it depends on how you define your terms, and anyway shut up."
I keep seeing posts worrying about helpless children stuck at home with their abusive families, not so many about kids relieved they don't have to worry about being raped or knifed in the girl's room or behind the gym. There's a lot of angst about losing everyone's favorite source of daycare and free lunches, less about whether kids are missing out on the acquisition of knowledge. Some kids are pretty happy about skipping the 3-hour-a-day commute.
Also: mass transit kills.
ReplyDeleteThree hours per day is extreme, but not unheard of, and that is a lot of kids.
ReplyDeleteAs for the lunches, what have those kids been doing in the summer all these years? Starving?
You are right about the violence. Nearly all males are assaulted at school at some point during their school years. We just don't call it that. Because boys fight, and usually don't take much damage from it, we severely downplay the more serious incidents, pretending it's the same thing.
The public schools in my county spend a surprising amount of their attention giving food to the kids, including large numbers of food-bank-style take-home care packages. Clothing and personal-hygiene items, too. There are an unbelievable number of families where there's no really competent adult in the house, so many parents and surrogate parents being addicts or convicts. The schools are trying to act in loco parentis not just from 9-3 but 24/7.
ReplyDeleteQuite a few home-schoolers here. Not many private schools, unfortunately. As always, I say: VOUCHERS.
Rural kids often have long commutes, and for some reason schools get more centralized at higher grades. We were near the end of the route and had quite a ride to elementary school, but by high school we then had to change buses and take a second ride to the central high school in the county seat.
ReplyDeleteMy son also always had a long commute. It’s my fault, because I don’t like to live in central locations among many others. I think mine was from 6 AM to nearly 8, which would be close to four hours a day on buses. His last one was probably an hour shorter than that, but he also had to change buses at an elementary school and then ride to the county seat.