Stop Torturing Kids
MONDAY is the first day of school in Gotham’s public system. And it’s on track to be the third needlessly disrupted academic year for kids. Parents, delighted that schools are reopening despite the best efforts of the teachers union, are largely quiescent about the absurd restrictions placed on kids. They whisper to each other about how it all makes little sense.
My daughter’s Manhattan middle school won’t be using lockers this year. My sons’ Brooklyn elementary school has let us know that water fountains will remain closed. No group projects, no field trips, no parties. Outdoor recess will be masked and distanced. Forget tag or sports.
We used to understand that it is important for kids to get exercise with friends. But we have forgotten everything we have ever known about child development in the name of fighting a virus that poses a minuscule risk to children.
A New York state Education Department health guide for the 2021-22 school year worries a lot about kids’ outrageous breathing. “Due to increased exhalation that occurs during physical activity, some sports can put players, coaches, trainers and others at increased risk for getting and spreading COVID-19. Close contact sports and indoor sports are particularly risky. Similar risks might exist for other extracurricular activities, such as band, choir, theater and school clubs that meet indoors.”
Kids all over the city will be eating lunch only outdoors while sitting on the ground. Some schools proscribe speaking during lunch. One Manhattan elementary school sent parents a survey asking what they should do in case of inclement weather. One of the options was actually “skip lunch.”
“Kids are resilient,” insist the world’s least resilient adults. Sure, kids may be fine after years of being treated like disease vectors, rather than human beings. Maybe they’ll someday be OK. Or maybe they’ll be severely damaged, leaving them utterly stunted and incapable of fulfilling their natures as social animals. We’ll see!
The worst part is the pointlessness. Few of these measures will move the needle whatsoever when it comes to safety — especially masking. Former Biden administration COVID adviser Michael Osterholm said last month, “We know today that many of the face cloth coverings that people wear are not very effective in reducing any of the virus movement in or out.”
Yes, we do know this but the safety-ism fanatics who rule us refuse to admit it. Even medical masks don’t do much to contain COVID. An August study from Waterloo University found that the common blue medical mask is about 10 percent effective in containing the virus. Meanwhile, study after study has found that being able to see human faces is essential to kids being able to develop a host of social and cognitive skills.
Adults in the United States are largely moving on with their lives, going to football games, concerts and galas — while kids are treated like lepers.
The real question is: When does it end? Will these restrictions ever go away? What’s the off-ramp for this level of cruel irrationality?
The signs are grim. Take Bedford, Mass. The Twitter account @BringKidsBackMA, dedicated to “advocating to get children back into the classroom,” posted photos of distanced chairs, no tables, all facing in one direction, even outside. That’s where middle-school kids in Bedford get to eat lunch. Yet kids ages 12 to 15 year in Bedford have an 85 percent vaccination rate. If restrictions don’t loosen with those kinds of vax rates, when do they?
Kids should have never been masked or deterred from any activities. They should have been living their normal lives all along, and they certainly shouldn’t be heading into a third year of abnormal schooling. We have put kids last during the 18-plus months we have been dealing with the virus. It’s long past the time to let them move on. It’s unlikely our fanatic elites will permit that.