TimB

I just don’t find it likely that when kids are learning remotely, most of them develop the mentality of juvenile delinquents who don’t care about cheating or its consequences because they don’t have a teacher watching over their shoulder at all times. And what your argument seems to boil down to is every kid is a juvenile delinquent at heart, they just need the right circumstances to bring it to the surface. Sorry, I just can’t bring myself to believe that all kids are sociopaths given the right conditions.

Of course it’s significantly harder to cheat in person than it is online. I’m just also of the belief that the kids who don’t want to learn won’t do it in any setting.

I know what goes on at school and at home, kids find new and creative ways to cheat on a daily basis. It’s not going to change, regardless of setting.

Failing also = not learning, and that’s what those kids would be doing if they didn’t have the opportunity to cheat (which they would, even in a school setting).

I would argue, and I think many educators would agree, that nothing substantial occurs between mid-April and the end of the school year.

I would argue that “people are going to cheat in school when learning remotely” is below at least 1,000 other issues to be worried about during the pandemic, maybe even 10,000.

I would argue that if someone cheats to get a bachelor’s degree, it will ultimately either catch up to them when they fail professionally where cheating isn’t an option, and they’ll get what they deserved, or it won’t catch up to them and they’ll be successful in the adult world so their cheating in college would become irrelevant. But ultimately we’re talking about high school, where people have cheated since the beginning of time and there’s never been much if any student integrity, so little would change.

So every single person on this earth would throw integrity to the wayside in that situation?

Grade inflation has been going on since the Vietnam days when professors didn’t want to flunk students because they wanted to make sure they stayed in school so they didn’t get sent to Vietnam. (And probably before that)

But haven’t students been cheating since the dawn of time?

Agreed. Even if this population probably skews white/upper middle class, if that’s how a student learns best, that option should be available through the public school system and kids shouldn’t be forced to go to a charter school or something for it.

Another day, another 80 degree reading. First time it’s happened on back to back days this early in the season since 3/22-23/2012.

That’s exactly it. The kids who are suffering from this are not kids like I was, or kids like my hypothetical, not-yet-existent kids will be. Those kids will be fine regardless of how school is conducted. But there are a lot more places where kids will fall through the cracks as a result of this pandemic, and a lot more kids will fall through the cracks than otherwise would have.

Guilty as charged, unfortunately I’m a middle class white person working from home and ordering Uber eats. Hence the reason I had to remind myself why it won’t really work out to have kids of any age going to school virtually for any real length of time.

Though, admittedly, this is very dependent on location and socioeconomic status and things like that. Leaving a 15 year old at home to go to school while the parents go to work is a completely different ballgame in an low crime, upper middle class suburban neighborhood where everyone has internet access vs. a high-crime, poorer urban area where not everyone has internet access.

The pros outweigh the cons, at least from now until the end of the school year, when fewer people are vaccinated and as stated above, all that’s going on in high schools is state-mandated bull***t like standardized tests. I have a totally different opinion for the fall when the covid risk is (hopefully) much lower and there’s actual curriculum to be learned and not just end-of-year nonsense.

It would not surprise me at all if that evidence is true, my comment was more devil’s advocate. However, I still think that calculation is a little different for elementary/middle vs. high school. If high schools are still conducted virtually until it is safer (i.e. through the end of the school year, I’m hoping most of the population will be vaccinated before school starts up again), it doesn’t prevent the parents from working outside of the home if their job requires them to do so because a 14 1/2 to 18 year old can be left at home to learn virtually. Maybe even 7th-8th graders, isn’t 12 the age when kids are allowed to be left at home by themselves? This time of the school year, most of the instruction being done in middle and high schools is preparing students for, and taking, standardized tests and state-mandated bull***t anyway.

Remember, hail apparently counts as snow, as detailed on here a few weeks back. There’s a shot at snow in every month!

On the flip side of that coin, a quick Google search turns up the fact that as of January there were 530 US teachers who died as a result of covid (that we know of, so the number is likely higher). And the fact is, given that teachers are usually able to retire before the age of 60, very few of them are in the vulnerable age group. So there’s a delicate balance between death and how much we’re willing to let students “fall behind” their peers in other states and countries that are mostly doing the same thing.

But standardized tests and all that nonsense... how could we possibly cancel those?! /s

Ah yes, that’s a plus. Back before the pandemic and before I decided not another dime of my hard earned money was going into Bob Nutting’s pockets, I tried to go to one game in that opening series (not necessarily the opener itself, so an evening game) every year. I remember going to one in maybe 2016 where the high was in the low 40s and then skipping out on one in 2018 because it was too cold with snow flurries. (I’m admittedly conflicted because of my well documented position on cold weather.)

I honestly can’t remember. I think it’s probably a combination of that and the virus was still very new so we couldn’t treat it as effectively as we can now. Also testing (at least here, not sure about Italy) was abysmal, so the denominator of that fraction was probably much higher than on paper.

Indeed, we’re officially at 81 at PIT, which hasn’t been reached here since September 12th.

81. We made it. First time since September.

What was I saying the other day about this turning into something like SARS? Edit: not saying it will. But things like this at least raise the possibility that it could.