Louder Than Words

Louder Than Words 

For weeks, there has been this ongoing discussion about what might happen when schools convene for the fall.  The whole of the debate has centered around safety for the students and how well prepared the schools would be for the onslaught. As expected there have been more than a few problems and a whack of school boards have had to deal with closures. The public is going to complain about the schools because it wants to be able to lay the blame at someone's doorstep. But the problem begins and ends with the governments who have not done enough to ensure that there was the ability to conduct rapid testing and determine whether a school was safe or not.  Whether we are talking about elementary or secondary schools, post secondary or not, when a problem arises, there is not the really necessary ability to test all the individuals involved and determine who has the infection and who doesn't.  I know that everyone is well-intentioned, at least here in Canada.  Everyone wants to do the best they can to ensure schools stay open and every school board has the ability to determine who needs to be isolated and who doesn't. Teacher do what they always do and try their best for their students.  But far too many jurisdictions have not done what they need to do to ensure that there are plenty of tests available and the turn around time is sufficient so that maybe schools can stay open but the sick students and their families can be isolated and quarantined.  No one lays out all the eventualities and deals with every single one so that every step is covered.  Then you read that school boards are holding back starting because they need more teachers to cover the online classes which have only grown in size because of the fear of leaving students in schools in real time, given how many students have been found to be contaminated, putting it bluntly.  Then you have all those university students who are not obeying the requirements mainly because they are coming from families that are more likely to deny that there is a problem or are unable to discipline their kids.  What this pandemic is revealing is just how poorly we were prepared as a society to deal with a crisis like this. The headline of one article in HaAretz, the Israeli left-leaning newspaper pointed out that Israeli society was able to get behind and unite in the face of danger from war but where they have to depend upon each other, nothing is possible, or working the way it should. Until we learn as a society and as a group of nations that we are in this together, and the solution depends upon all of use, nothing is going to change.  Sadly;y too many people think of it as them against the world and we need to see it is US against the virus, against a warming climate and so forth.