Read on Twitter
When I first read this tweet, it got my back up. "I know parents are having a hard time," I thought, "but what about teachers? Going to work puts their lives in danger! And schools are not a safe place for students right now. The cases need to come down." https://twitter.com/amydempsey/status/1381689691842433034
But it didn't take me long to realize that of course the concerns raised in that original tweet are valid. Closing schools puts a lot of parents in an impossible situation.
How do we deal with this conflict? How do we resolve the inherent contradiction between educators' and students' need to be kept safe from the virus, and parents' and kids' need for a safe place for kids to be during the day? It seems impossible.
It's easy to fall into this kind of thinking: Parents need one thing, school workers need another, those needs are in conflict, someone has to lose. It sucks, but what can you do?
This is wrong.
This is wrong.
This is a false dichotomy, manufactured by our governments' failure. Our provincial and federal governments have had a _year_, and every kind of warning, to prevent this crisis. They chose not to.
A year during which they could have kept restaurants and gyms closed and paid people to stay home. A year to suspend rent and mortgage payments. A year to implement and enforce covid safety requirements at truly necessary workplaces.
A year to invest in air filtration systems for classrooms, to find and rent unused office spaces, to hire additional staff and shrink class sizes.
A year to prevent this slow-motion disaster that every single expert saw coming.
A year to prevent this slow-motion disaster that every single expert saw coming.
I don't know how to end this thread. This is where we are, and it sucks. I'm just doing my best to remember, as we try to navigate this current crisis, that it is manufactured. It didn't have to be like this, and we are being pitted against each other on purpose.
