Did the benefits of lockdown outweigh the harm to children’s education?

[PoisedKhakiUser]

AIBU to ask whether the benefits of lockdown - saving lives and protecting health - outweighed the damage it did to children’s education and future life chances? I feel like kids lost out on so much during this time, and I wonder if the cost was too high.

I don’t know but I am interested in this question. I think maybe schools should have opened earlier than that they did. It might be a false memory but I seem to remember pubs opening before schools in Scotland and thinking that was a weird choice.

No.

Schools opened in general when they were allowed to. They were open for key workers though.

Not for us personally.
We don't believe in schools.
Made no difference...except we couldn't go to the library/ museums/ swimming etc at that time.

Is not believing in schools like not believing in ghosts?

Children who needed school lost access to them when they needed it most. But I think those who didn’t (eg those with wealthier; healthier; loving parents) probably had a better time of it than they would have otherwise. Eg I got the nursery I wanted when DS was born because of other people becoming unemployed during covid (2 year waiting list before that). I had a shielding group of other parents like me so DS got quality time with me, family, and friends

I think that had there been restrictions from even two weeks earlier and in October not November 2020, the impact would have been much less. Schools could then have re-opened even one day a week in June or July 2020, which would have reduced the isolation for children a lot.

But our then Prime Minister was more interested in pubs re-opening than children's education, in spite of the number of children he has.

I think during the first wave, lockdown was very much necessary. Nobody knew what we were dealing with, not even top-level doctors and scientists.

That said, I think subsequent lockdowns affected young people more than was reasonable. Pubs opened and international business travel was open, yet children couldn't socialize or be educated. Priorities were entirely wrong.

It's a hard topic. It's never good when people die, but the fact is that everybody will die someday. The vulnerable and elderly will by-and-large die sooner than the rest of the population. And while I would never want to endanger anyone regardless of their age, I don't know that it was worth the education and mental health of a generation of children with their whole lives ahead of them.

No idea. I think it's far too simplistic to think of it in such binary terms.

Neither lockdown nor schools closing were much of an issue for us. For some there dreadful consequences of both, for some both were positives.

The harms of lockdown on kids were profound and ongoing. There are 130k children who never returned to schools and nobody know where they are.

childrens’ mental health is on its knees.

Makes you wonder why we had lockdowns in the first place when we can just go about our business as normal now. They were ridiculous.

Those who had parents able and willing to help homeschool, probably did ok. But homes where parents had to work, had limited devices etc. and were unable to support as much as the kids needed, (through no fault of heir own.) probably not.

Damage to kids education no
Damage to kids mental health yes
Many will never recover, personally I don’t think it was worth it

What are your thoughts on the matter OP?

If we had a time machine we could go back and keep them open.
However that might have made it spread harder and faster. Teachers with underlying health conditions or caring for elderly would have been more impacted.
Medically vulnerable families would have been more at risk.

Our children were probably more impacted long term than maybe the government / experts expected, but keeping schools open would have had its own consequences.

My DD is still recovering, but with the info we had at the time, or have now, I'm not sure what else they should have done.

Without the benefit of a parallel universe, it's something that can't be judged.

I believe lockdown was not about not catching COVID, but more about spreading it out so that the NHS was not swamped with too many acute cases at once.

So who can say exactly what would have happened if we had just let it run a shorter but possibly more severe course.

Some children have struggled with the effects of lockdown. I know my mum had life long issues around being evacuated.

Sometimes things happen that at the time were thought to be for the best, then afterwards, maybe not.

But in our household it was a unexpected but very welcome situation. My child was anxious and actually benefitted from being able to stay home and regroup.

So true, we had the space at home to create a home school environment and our school did a full day of online lessons. Children could interact online with their peers. Work packs were sent to us weekly which meant everyone had access to a printer. If not school made arrangements to deliver them to you. Everything continued as if you were in a classroom but online. This is a private school though.
I really feel for those children whose education and social interaction just stopped abruptly. Many were lost out of the system too.

With the benefit of hindsight ,lockdown imo was needed in march 2020 ,schools were probably closed for too long but it was a novel virus and hindsight is a,wonderful thing etc
The second school closure was ridiculous, suddenly everyone was a key worker and in some schools loads of kids were in
Theu either needed to close or not not have a half in or half out approach

I think we let children down. I don't think we should allow it to happen again. I complied with lockdown but I didn't think it made a lot of sense at the time. The rolling lockdowns made even less sense. I don't think I'd do it again.

I think probably every country got some things wrong and some things right. Sweden probably got lockdowns right. We did well on vaccination. Maybe in 50 years we'll know what the right answer was or the perfect response, once all the research is in. But for now, I do feel we harmed children with lockdowns.

I think restrictions were needed to avoid hospitals being even more overwhelmed, just should have been sooner so they could have been for shorter periods.

I believe if you had at the time had a competent Prime Minister, regardless of political party, 20,000 plus fewer people would have died, and children could have been affected much less.

It depends on your point of reference. For children and teachers with underlying health problems it could have saved their lives also you have to take into consideration that with a novel disease we mostly had no immunity so doing nothing could have been catastrophic.

Hindsight is 20/20. It turns out that many of us so not get seriously ill if at all from Covid, not even a cold in my case but for others it kills, gives them post viral fatigue and ruins lives. Could anyone in March 2020 know which people needed protection?

Many children thrived during lockdowns, my niece and nephew were so much better for the extra time with their parents

The damage to my daughter's mental health from the lockdowns is immense, she is 17 now and is in a really bad place, her psychiatrist agrees that lockdown had a massive effect on her.

Hindsight is brilliant however no thought was really given to children. We have huge problems with the age group that were locked down and mental health services, cannot keep up with demand.

I would imagine the response will depend very much on if you lived anyone who died and if you love anyone particularly vulnerable or who has been blighted post viral. Yes my children struggled and still do, but was that lockdown or pandemic?

I feel the lockdown had significant benefits in terms of saving lives and protecting public health, but it also came with considerable drawbacks for children’s education and social development. Many kids faced disruptions in their learning and emotional wellbeing, and I think there needs to be more of an open dialogue about how these challenges can be addressed moving forward. What are your thoughts?

In a word, no.