Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

Comment by CryptoPunk | Hacker News Reader

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This is exactly the dichotomy many teachers unions forced, as they demanded not more safety measures for in-person schooling, but school closures and remote learning.

>>Keeping schools open in various parts of the country and failing to implement proper safety measures resulted in tragic losses of brilliant young teachers who didn't have to die.

This is entirely speculation, while you demand extreme rigor from me when I suggest a causative link behind the surge in drug overdose deaths in 2020 and the lockdown policies that massively exacerbated social isolation.

>>A lot of that has to do with the inequitable distribution of resources and access to things like wifi, computers, and quiet spaces for study. We have been advocating for funding for these things for a long time, for precisely this reason.

So you are admitting that teacher's unions knew that this would happen in the event of school closures. The teacher's unions' behavior was completely inexcusable and they were clearly not advocating for children.

> This is exactly the dichotomy many teachers unions forced, as they demanded not more safety measures for in-person schooling, but school closures and remote learning.

Not in my experience, no. We've asked for all measures of all kinds, and have been met with blanket "no's" in many places.

> This is entirely speculation, while you demand extreme rigor from me when I suggest a causative link behind the surge in drug overdose deaths in 2020 and the lockdown policies that massively exacerbated social isolation.

I had specific people in mind when I wrote that sentence. And I'm not demanding extreme rigor, I just want to see the causative link. Still yet to see it.

> The teacher's unions' behavior was completely inexcusable and they were clearly not advocating for children.

First of all, the initial round of school closings was not at the behest of teacher's unions, it was an almost coordinated movement across the entire country and in many industries. Very hard to put school closings at the feet of teachers unions. Secondly, teachers unions advocate for teachers, not children. Children have their own advocates in teachers themselves, who in fact advocated the strongest for children during this time. Very strange this effort to paint teachers as somehow anti-children when they literally devote their lives to kids at great personal cost to themselves.

>>Not in my experience, no. We've asked for all measures of all kinds, and have been met with blanket "no's" in many places.

I find that extremely hard to believe, as pressure from teachers unions successfully kept schools closed for over a year in many jurisdictions. The political cost to political leaders, and welfare costs to society, of simply accepting some demand for more safety measures in schools would have been far lower than keeping schools closed altogether, yet the latter is what happened.

>>I had specific people in mind when I wrote that sentence.

What do you mean? You made an allegation of a causative link, with no evidence provided beyond an anecdotal correlation.

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