The sharp contrast between how Europe is handling schools in the era of COVID-19 and how America is handling them is dispiriting. In Europe, the children are a priority. In the United States, they’re an afterthought. And it puts the lie to the false piety of American governors and mayors as they kept schools shut while claiming to be “following the science.”
Data from Europe show the U.S. to be an outlier here — a status sure to increase parents’ frustration and productivity struggles further and cast into doubt the country’s ability to get back to what it once considered normal.
In early October, amid new case spikes of the novel coronavirus, Northern Ireland and the Czech Republic closed their schools. As Europe braced for its second coronavirus wave, these two countries stood out as the only two to include all schools in their closure lists.
Each European country is currently doing its own complicated dance to manage virus rates while not going into a second full lockdown.
France has implemented a 9 p.m. curfew in Paris and the other large cities until Dec. 1. Restaurants and bars closed, and gatherings are limited to 10 people. “We won’t go to restaurants after 9 p.m., we won’t see friends, we won’t party, because that’s how to pass on the virus,” French President Emmanuel Macron said.
Poland closed high schools and colleges in red zones, where infection rates are particularly high, and limited attendance at religious ceremonies to “one person per 4 square metres of space.”
The Netherlands closed all restaurants, coffee shops, and bars, and all other stores have to close each day at 8 p.m. “A maximum of three people can visit your home per day, and only four can meet outside, but both rules exclude children under 13,” the BBC reported.
Spain took action in Madrid, limiting the hours that restaurants and bars can be open and seating to half of capacity. Restaurant owners are concerned that the late-eating Spaniards won’t be able to adapt to eating at the absurdly early (for them) time of 8 p.m.
But for all the differences, school remains a priority in all of these countries. The closings are being maneuvered around children’s welfare. The fact that the great majority of European countries are holding off on closing schools is a good sign of how seriously they take education — and the science of COVID.
Even the Northern Ireland and Czech Republic school closures have end dates: Northern Ireland plans to reopen schools after two weeks, the Czech Republic in three. Prime Minister Andrej Babis calls it Czechs’ “one shot” to stop the spread. His government said that “while schools would definitely reopen on Nov. 2, other measures would be relaxed according to the epidemiological situation,” according to Reuters.
In the U.S., only three major cities have reopened their school districts for any in-person learning since closing them in March. New York City, after two delays, reopened on Sept. 29. Miami-Dade County Public Schools opened on Oct. 5. Dallas Independent School District phased in only elementary schools, also by Oct. 5. Houston Independent School District is opening at press time.
Part of the disparity is that American cities created a convoluted reopening scheme in which New York City, believe it or not, is considered a success story by comparison for even getting a brief opening window. But a closer look at the system shows a deep disregard for science and, at best, a part-time education model.
On Sept. 15, New York Mayor Bill de Blasio was on CNN touting the city’s push to open schools. “We really try to create a global gold standard here,” he told the network. “We looked at the best practices from around the globe, and we went farther. Testing is being provided for free to anyone who wants and needs it. We’ll be testing regularly. We have masks on all adults and children — actually, very few countries in the world have required that. We are requiring that. Constant cleaning, a lot of social distancing, a typical New York City public school classroom will have about 10 or 12 students, unheard of to have so few kids in a room.”
De Blasio was right, in a way: The various rules New York adopted were featured in other countries’ responses. Instead of putting together a well-balanced meal, the city ordered one of everything on the menu. Scientists, for example, long ago reversed themselves on the early idea that the coronavirus is spread frequently on surfaces, yet in New York, if a student has a confirmed or suspected COVID-19 case, his or her classroom will be closed for cleaning and disinfecting.
The issue of mandated mask-wearing shows de Blasio’s disingenuousness. In most European countries, masks are only required for children over 11 years old, and while they may be required in common spaces of the school building, they are generally not worn in the classroom. Germany has one of the tightest mask mandates since making them compulsory in April yet has relaxed rules for children. In Berlin, children wear masks “during the breaks, in staircases and communal rooms,” but not during class or outdoors.
In New York City, children age 2 and up must mask up. Kindergartners, not known for their clarity of speech, are forced to interact with each other and with teachers while wearing a mask.
In the open schools of New York City, Miami, and Dallas, masks are mandatory for all students and are worn throughout the day, only to be removed for lunch, which is eaten at their desks. Masks even remain on during recess — that is, if you’re lucky enough to be at a school that still has recess. Social distancing is also in effect at recess. Children are outdoors, with masks on, and not near each other attempting to play together.
The social distancing part of the equation is actually the most problematic. Social distancing is very difficult to accomplish in tight New York City schools, so the in-person classes have been split up into cohorts — subgroups within a grade. In the luckier schools, two cohorts per grade split their classroom time each week. That means, for instance, Cohort A gets in-person instruction on Tuesdays and Thursdays and every other Monday, while Cohort B is in school Wednesdays and Fridays and every other Monday. In a typical month, that translates to about 10 to 12 days of school.
And that’s the best-case scenario.
At the others, three cohorts split a week and in-person learning. “Students will receive in-person instruction 1-2 days per week for a total of 5 days every 3 weeks,” according to the New York City schools website.
On the remote days, students are given assignments to complete or apps to use. Many parents complained to me that all of that work translates into about an hour of actual learning. Twelve days and under 15 hours of remote work a month is not an education.
New York City was hit hard by COVID-19. It’s understandable that officials would take precautions. But our approach has become unscientific and, frankly, hysterical.
The science has been clear for some time that children are not major spreaders of the coronavirus. Children do contract it, occasionally, but it’s rare that they pass it on to each other or to adults.
Tom is a resident of Madrid. Every week, his children’s school sends an update about how many students or faculty at the school have contracted the virus. A typical email will include a breezy, “This week, we have three positive cases for COVID-19. Two of these are new cases, and both contracted the virus outside of school. All three are recovering well at home.”
This is in sharp contrast to New York. Several parents shared emails with me from their children’s schools. Two cases in different classrooms at a school forces an automatic shutdown of the school building in New York City. If no link between the two cases can be established, the school inexplicably remains closed for two weeks.
There’s a sense that parents in New York (or Dallas or Miami) shouldn’t complain about the problems their schools are encountering or the weird way administrations have decided to open schools. After all, school districts in Los Angeles, Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta, and so on have not even attempted in-person school reopening.
But that’s merely an argument that total failure is worse than mostly failure. We have watched Europe do the opposite of what America has done, in terms of school openings, and it seems far saner than what we are attempting.
So much writing on COVID-19 is premature. Every article touting some country’s success, whether it’s South Korea or Australia, Israel or Spain, is often eventually followed up with a piece about what then went wrong in its response. All of these previously praised countries have had a resurgence of the virus and a second lockdown.
And, of course, more countries might close schools if things deteriorate. Looking at priorities, therefore, is far more telling. Unlike the Northern Irish or Czech school closings, American cities are largely mum about when, exactly, schools can reopen for in-person learning. In New York City, despite the sustained low positive test numbers, no plans exist to open schools for full-time education. It’s not even a consideration.
What countries seek to open first and what they fail to open at all tells a larger societal story that gets missed in COVID-19 data. When the pandemic is over, it will be hard to forget how most major American cities didn’t prioritize education and the ones that did try to open did it in the most backward ways possible. The reason it’ll be hard to forget is because we will have defied the science at the behest of teachers unions and the politicians who cater to them and will have likely done lasting damage to the health and future of America’s youth. We need a society to return to when the pandemic ends. That society begins with school.
Karol Markowicz is a New York Post columnist and a Washington Examiner contributing writer.
