We have four teachers in my immediate family, and one has just tested positive for COVID-19.
Our son, teaching in Sweden, called this morning to verify that he tested positive in a country that has taken the “herd immunity” approach to utter failure with one of the highest per capita death rates in the world. They also insist in keeping their grade and middle schools open despite the COVID rates in the students’ families being high. This is in major part to keep the workforce of parents still working with kids taken care of in school.
We have the same problem in this country: Keep the kids in school but at what cost – teachers’ lives? They are frontline workers just like people in other fields of work, being exposed to students who may be carriers of COVID. We are in a pandemic, which calls for unusual steps to be taken like remote learning for a few months to stop the spread because it obviously is not stopping the way we are proceeding now.
The bottom line here is: If you wipe out your teacher force, who’s going to take over?
Jake Hawkins
Arundel
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