And as could be predicted, on this thread we have teachers (and some parents) calmly explaining how schools run, what they do and how they do it: as well as the many challenges schools face, most of which were an issue long before the UK lockdown. Reasoned explanations that have been put forward time and time again on a multitude of other threads. And on the opposing side? We have posters using this as a forum to peddle the usual, right-wing, anti-lockdown sentiments, including presenting yet another round of fake comparisons between countries that have never been in the position the UK is, with regard to infection levels, death rates etc…Many of which already had better education facilities, funding and smaller classes, so started out with a material advantage and continue to do so.
We’ve also had unsubstantiated claims re: suicide rates, alongside predictable, general mud-slinging at schools and teachers. BUT for some reason the government’s response to the pandemic or their handling of education and childcare seems to be largely off-limits. Even though how things are currently playing out in UK education, including the pitiful lack of policy on alternative childcare provision for working parents, tracks right back to the government doorstep. Or maybe some posters are just more interested in union-bashing than reality?
Tbf there are some parents who are genuinely trying to work out how to support schools and teachers and their children and find a way to manage in this crisis situation. One that’s beyond their's or teachers’ control. Although this particular parental stance is increasingly undermined by the sheer numbers of parents on other MN threads recounting how they outwitted the rules: a prime example the thread currently running where a whole host of parents gleefully outline the ways in which they have ignored social distancing, mingled households and so on… beautifully demonstrating why schools are potentially dangerous spaces for anyone who takes this pandemic’s threats seriously or for whom this outbreak is a serious health threat
www.mumsnet.com/Talk/coronavirus/3929628-kids-playing-together
Interestingly what we haven’t had is any consideration of the high risks that fully opening schools before the UK has successfully moved beyond, what even government advisors have called, a ‘dangerous’ level of infection levels poses to BAME pupils and teachers. A fact that seems to have been studiously ignored on this thread (and far too many similar ones) by those posters agitating for schools to run without effective, practical health and safety measures.
www.theguardian.com/education/2020/may/26/plans-to-reopen-english-schools
Or should those of us who ARE taking these factors into account just take it as read that anti-lockdown posters consider ethnic minorities, along with the elderly, people with disabilities and the otherwise vulnerable expendable and/or acceptable collateral damage?
Personally, I prefer to refrain from hyperbolic references to Hitler or the Nazis, but as Hopsalong has now invoked Godwin’s Law, then I would say that you Hopsalong, and others like you, are the Nazis in this scenario. The Nazis set out to systematically exterminate ethnic minorities, the disabled and the vulnerable, because they thought their lives were worthless, and it’s clear that in this scenario your sentiments are not dissimilar. And who is the ‘our’ in your ill-thought-out and offensive little scenario? It’s certainly not BAME communities, the disabled, vulnerable or elderly!!