Nature Wants Revenge 4: Schools Out...Forever?

Been around a thousand schools, so I hear, that have had an experience of Covid since reopening. Confirmed or otherwise. This is, obviously, troubling. Not least of all because our Baroness-overseen test and trace system is currently a wreck and disgrace system. Not because of the workers; they're doing their best. But because it's been handed to privateers - and yet the media has allowed the NHS to incorrectly bear the blame. Just to mention, this is exactly a consequence of Tory privatisation. Their plans are to hollow out the service, give the most profitable provisions to the private sector and let the NHS keep the difficult stuff. Yet all under the aegis of the NHS, which means when private sectors invariably come up short, the NHS can be blamed.

Where was I?

So how can schools function for this academic year? They have had all summer to address this situation. What have they done? Nothing. It's all been left to teachers and local authorities, as has so much of the response to this crisis. Clearly underfunded schools can't afford to do everything that may be necessary, never mind adapting infrastructure to address the pandemic. But the virus doesn't care about your kids. 

Even if one kid gets the virus, how many other students/staff will be asymptomatic? How did they catch the virus or bring it into the school?

If the cases are suspect, but prove not to be confirmed, they still have to be investigated and people will still need to self isolate given a lack of testing. 

Given this, how can schools possibly function if they have to open/close every other week because someone somewhere has turned up and presented with symptoms. That means another year written off, which will almost certainly devastate children's lives.

We already have a terrible education system - not the fault of teachers, but the fault of government tinkering. Capitalism begins at school. Every aspect of the curriculum, overseen and developed by the capitalist ruling class, exists to reinforce capitalist values: competition, division, streaming, performance. Debt, even.

We have an unprecedented, golden (though for dark reasons), opportunity to change so much in society, including how we raise and teach upcoming generations. We must not let this go to waste, even though it will take much struggle. Let's fight.