The podcast explores how school closures during the pandemic disproportionately harmed underprivileged children, exacerbating pre-existing educational inequities.
David Zweig highlights the discrepancy between U.S. school policies and successful international strategies, revealing a failure to adapt to emerging evidence.
A culture of safetyism emerged, prioritizing caution over empirical evidence, leading to detrimental outcomes for children in education and mental health.
Deep dives
Challenges of Remote Learning
During the pandemic, remote learning posed significant challenges for children, particularly those in elementary school. Parents observed that their children, like a third grader who finished his tasks in ten minutes, struggled to engage with online education, leading to increased isolation and boredom. The closure of schools limited children’s interaction with peers, compounding the negative effects of the learning format. This situation prompted parents to question the effectiveness of lockdown measures when it became apparent that children's educational and social needs were not being met.
Reevaluating School Closures
As the pandemic progressed, evidence began to emerge suggesting that children were at a much lower risk from COVID-19 than initially believed. Studies showed that the risks posed to healthy middle-aged adults were also not as high as portrayed, leading to skepticism about the decision to close schools as a mitigation measure. Despite encountering this new evidence, authorities extended lockdown measures, leaving many parents feeling that they had complied with initial directives without rationale behind continued restrictions. This prompted some to start advocating for school reopenings based on what they viewed as missed opportunities to protect children's education.
Ignorance of European School Reopenings
Internationally, particularly in Europe, schools began to reopen with little adverse effects reported, which starkly contrasted with the situation in the U.S. Education ministers from multiple European countries met and reported no spikes in COVID cases associated with the reopening of schools, suggesting a success in managing the virus while maintaining education. However, this significant information was largely ignored by American authorities, who provided various unsupported reasons for keeping schools closed. This failure to recognize and act upon the evidence from other countries raised questions about the motivations behind the U.S. education policies during the pandemic.
Misapplication of Safety Precautions
Throughout the pandemic, a culture of safetyism emerged, leading many institutions to prioritize extreme caution over empirical evidence. Decisions about school policies tended to focus on minimizing potential harm without considering the broader implications of such actions, resulting in detrimental outcomes like increased mental health issues and educational setbacks for children. Many of the recommended safety measures, such as social distancing and specialized barriers, were largely untested or based on unfounded assumptions, ultimately failing to demonstrate their effectiveness in mitigating COVID risk in school environments. The resulting focus on caution over scientific rigor led to misguided policies that negatively impacted families and children across the country.
Lessons on Evidence and Governance
The pandemic revealed critical flaws in how public health decisions were made, particularly the reliance on flawed models rather than established evidence-based practices. Influential models that guided policies throughout the crisis were often based on dubious assumptions, leading to misguided responses that failed to account for real-world data. This highlights the importance of maintaining a critical perspective on information presented by authorities and understanding the nuances behind health recommendations. Moving forward, fostering an informed public that questions and evaluates the evidence will be essential for better navigating future public health challenges.
David Zweig’s new book An Abundance of Caution (MIT Press) is an account of the decision-making process behind the extended closures of public schools during the pandemic. In fascinating and meticulously reported detail, Zweig shows how some of the most trusted members of society—from Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists to eminent health officials—repeatedly made fundamental errors in their assessment and presentation of evidence.
By fall 2020, many students in Europe were already back in classrooms—and so were their peers in private schools in America and in public schools across mostly “red” states and districts. Yet millions of other children across the U.S. remained under extended school closures.
Whatever inequities that existed among American children before the pandemic, the selective school closures exacerbated them, disproportionately affecting the underprivileged. Deep mental, physical, and academic harms—among them, depression, anxiety, abuse, obesity, plummeting test scores, and rising drop-out rates—were endured for no discernible benefit.
The story of American schools during the pandemic serves as a prism through which to approach fundamental questions about why and how individuals, bureaucracies, governments, and societies act as they do in times of crisis and uncertainty. Ultimately, this book is not about COVID; it’s about being ill-equipped to make decisions under duress.
David Zweig is a writer, lecturer, and journalist. His writing has appeared in The Atlantic, The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Free Press, and his newsletter, Silent Lunch. He is the author of Invisibles, about the power of embracing anonymous work in a culture obsessed with praise and recognition. His new book is An Abundance of Caution: American Schools, the Virus, and a Story of Bad Decisions.
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