The premise that we need to reopen schools because it is the best way provide children with a quality education is so patently false that I am amazed people actually believe it.
I have been teaching music for more than 22 years. I have taught individuals of all ages and groups of all sizes in garages, under the shade of trees, in homes, online, in music stores, in rooms no larger than a walk-in closet, in noisy rooms with lots of distractions, and in a variety of public and private educational facilities and institutions. In my experience, the surroundings have little to do with the “quality” of education. Instead, it is the relationship between the student and the teacher that will make the experience profound (meaning have quality).
The real reason we are even contemplating reopening public schools is child care for working parents and equity for those who have poor internet connectivity, limited technology at home, home situations that are unsafe, and material needs such as lab work.
Even in New England, where the risks of COVID-19 infection are currently small, banks allow only a few people in their lobbies, restaurants are serving on streets, libraries are curbside, doctors’ offices limit patients, grocery stores limit shoppers, towns require masks, hospitals have you run a gauntlet, there are no indoor concerts or fairs, and colleges are delivering the vast majority of the fall semester online.
What if we use school buildings as “hubs of connectivity and child care” for those who need it?
Students and teachers, regardless of “where” they are, deliver and receive educational services online. All of the challenges of in-person instruction will still be present. However, the cohorts will be smaller and more spread out, the exposure will be smaller, the protective equipment needs will be smaller, lunch and cafeteria problems will be spread out, and teachers can focus on what we do best — connecting with students in profound ways.
Instead, we are insisting on returning to an educational model that is so obviously outdated and dystopian it amazes me that anyone supports it.
JOSHUA HALL
Brownsville
The writer is a music teacher at Frances C. Richmond Middle School in Hanover.
If the village idiot, or even two village idiots, told you to do something to please them, would you do it? That’s basically what President Donald Trump and Education Secretary Betsy DeVos are doing by telling schools they must reopen.
What gives Trump the right to demand this following his pathetic response to a global pandemic? Can we just step back and take a minute to understand what this could possibly lead too? Can we put two and two together?
While remote learning wasn’t ideal, it sure was a lot safer for students and teachers alike. Has anyone thought to ask the students how they feel about going back to in-class learning? I bet a lot of them are worried, not just about themselves but about bringing home a virus that could infect their whole household, from grandma on down the line.
I know there are a lot of questions, but that’s the nature of this virus — a lot of unanswered questions. I will share a quote from David Baldacci’s novel Long Road to Mercy: “Hindsight held a level of perfection that real-time decision-making could not provide.”
So my final question: What’s the rush?
JAMES KELLY
Lyme
To the members of the Hartford Selectboard who have shown their true selves by opposing the Pledge of Allegiance: Why don’t you get out of office and move out of this country so you don’t have to show any respect to our American flag and what it stands for?
By God’s mercy and grace, our military men and women and families gave their all for these freedoms so you could and can think as you wish and pull the U.S. down to your level. You want the U.S. to respect you, but it’s obvious you don’t give the U.S. the same respect.
BARBARA NIELSEN
White River Junction
Due respect to Forum contributor Denis B. Backus (“The Pledge of Allegiance means a lot to veterans,” Aug. 8), and my thanks to him and all active duty military and veterans, but no American soldier has fought for U.S. civilians’ “freedom” since the Civil War. Every military veteran since 1866 or so has fought to, as the enlistment oath reads, “support and defend the Constitution of the United States.”
Being a patriot, our Constitution and the principles it lays out mean a lot to me. Whether the Pledge of Allegiance means a lot to anyone, it is certainly not part of the Constitution. In fact, claiming that I or anyone ought to recite, stand for, or in any way take part in the pledge undermines the Constitution and the freedoms it is meant to ensure.
The First Amendment does not obligate anyone to pledge allegiance to anything in heaven or on Earth. The First Amendment, and the Supreme Court’s decisions interpreting, it protects each American’s right to, for example, stay seated, turn away, raise a right fist or kneel during the Pledge of Allegiance (or the playing of The Star-Spangled Banner, for that matter). Whether such an action would be “politically correct” at a specific time or place is quite a different matter. I doubt many vets signed on to support and defend political correctness.
Our military’s overall goal is to protect the Constitution and the rights it was designed to ensure so they benefit all citizens and all persons on U.S. soil — including the First Amendment, which gives each of us the freedom to express our views (except, say, to yell “fire” in a crowded rally for President Donald Trump), or to refrain from expressing them.
As distasteful as some may find certain types of First Amendment expression, it is blessed by the highest authority that I will answer to in this lifetime: the U.S. Constitution. Consider me a conscientious objector to political correctness cloaked in constitutional misinterpretation.
JOHN W. VORDER BRUEGGE
Springfield, Vt.
Everything is now politics, even face masks in a pandemic. American politics has become an arena for angry minds characterized by the sense of “heated exaggeration, suspiciousness, and conspiratorial fantasy,” as Richard Hofstadter wrote in The Paranoid Style in American Politics.
President Donald Trump’s leadership has wrought deep divisions, a kind of tribalism with voters divided by race, religious belief, geography and even way of life. We can’t find common ground on which to respectfully disagree; the other side is “the enemy.” My worry is that if we lose sight of the social good outside of politics, we will lose our democratic society.
In the current political scene, emotions run high. Trump feels threatened and responds defensively when faced with probing questions. He has lashed out at reporters during his coronavirus press briefings. Some examples: on March 20, Trump called NBC News’ Peter Alexander a “terrible reporter” for asking what he would say to Americans who felt afraid; on March 29, he shut down Yamiche Alcindor of PBS NewsHour for asking about the White House dismantling a key pandemics team in 2018, saying, “I just think it’s a nasty question.”
On April 6, Trump called ABC’s Jonathan Karl a “third-rate reporter” after Karl followed up about the inspector general’s report. When CBS News reporter Paula Reid asked about ramping up testing, Trump told Reid pointedly: “Look, you know you’re a fake. You know that. Your whole network — the way you cover it — is fake.”
If the president can’t show the way for dialogue on important issues, one would hope that news commentators and experts on programs like MSNBS, CNN, Fox News or PBS NewsHour or talk radio would. Not so. Many of the programs consist merely of opinion exchanges among like-minded people. When argument ensues among those with contrary views, little effort is made to ask clarifying questions or to build on their respective viewpoints for understanding.
My concern is voiced by The Baltimore Sun’s media critic, David Zurawik: “Without a free flow of reliable, trustworthy, verified information, democracy is impossible.”
BOB SCOBIE
West Lebanon
Regarding Dick Mackay’s letter of Aug. 6 (“New reason to avoid Hanover”): Whatever people may think of it, like any other town, Hanover has its challenges and its good points. One of its good points is a sense of community. One of its challenges is entitlement. It is not the only town that has that challenge.
There are two kinds of entitlement that come into play when any town is faced with change. One shows up in people whose mind-set seems like a “No Trespassing” sign. The other shows up in people whose mind-set seems like a “Don’t Tread on Me” flag.
Mackay falls into the second group. These folks sometimes object to a common-sense regulation, finding it to be inconvenient. They label it an attack on their personal liberty and decide they’re entitled to disregard it.
Most adults’ decisions are their own business. You might get a ticket for choosing to jaywalk, but usually no one gets hurt. There are times, though, when the greater good — that sense of community — must take priority. If you decide you’re entitled to violate the rules in those situations, you go well beyond endangering only yourself. You willfully endanger others, too. You may choose to drink as much alcohol as you want, but you are not entitled to drive drunk.
That’s how it is with wearing face masks during a deadly pandemic. You may think you should have the right to act as if you’re immune, but others around you are not.
This mask thing is not all about you. It’s about all of us.
REBECCA KVAM PAQUETTE
Hanover
Thank you, Dan Mackie. You inspired me to express myself in a new way beyond just saying “please vote” (“Over Easy: Of masks and men,” Aug. 8):
Yes, no, or without decision,
we pick candidates with no precision.
Our leaders are feckless,
making virus defense reckless.
Such behavior is democracy’s division.
Our country pleads with us to make a resounding statement with everyone’s vote in November.
DAVID DAVISON
White River Junction
A limerick inspired by Dan Mackie’s column (“Over Easy: Of masks and men,” Aug. 8):
Dan Mackie’s mask touting was magic.
I laughed amidst news very tragic.
There’s ugly dissension
and excess pretension.
Humor clots wounds hemorrhagic.
LORI MEYERS
Hanover