The Stolen Year
tarahenley.substack.com
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When schools were closed at the beginning of the pandemic, we did not have a robust public debate.
The issue, unfortunately, was politicized — and it has only been recently, with the data now emerging, that a mainstream conversation has been possible.
Back in 2020, my guest on the podcast today warned what school closures could mean for children, and particularly for the most vulnerable kids.
Anya Kamenetz is a former education reporter for NPR. Her new book is The Stolen Year: How Covid Changed Children’s Lives, And Where We Go Now.
Anya Kamenetz is my guest, today on Lean Out.
The Stolen Year
I live in an 80% liberal community and they are still defending the school closures as justified to prevent death from COVID.
In other words, liberals seem to own a level of selfish immorality that is connected to their fear of death where they justify harm to others if only to convince them that it would improve their odds of living.
But decisions made based on a selfish emotional basis rooted in the fear of death are generally going to be fraught with mistakes and harm to the whole. Because this is a fundamental psychological tendency of some people, it is useless to think we can win a rational debate to prevent future harm. This should be noted as a dangerous tendency with too much liberal control of government. To fix what is broken we have to take away that decision power from the people so afflicted.
An excellent interview - thanks. In the UK the teacher's trade union forced school closures and the cancellation of exams. Sadly, much of this was done for political reasons. The union is a supporter of the Labour Party and the government is Conservative. Not only were the schools closed but many of them, especially in poor areas, provided little online education. The drop in education standards, due to Covid, has been as bad as that caused by WWII.