The First Day of School, Believing the Science, and Anecdotal Evidence

Photo by Akbarali, CC BY-SA 4.0 <https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0>, via Wikimedia Commons

This morning resumed what, for most of my adult life, has been ritual from August to June of each year. Children have to get to school. Not semi-sit-up and log on to their laptops, but actually get up and go to the school building. This is the first time in over a year they have done so, due to the closing of schools because of the Covid-19 pandemic. So long, in fact, one of my children will be starting in a building she’s never been in as a student since she — like several hundred others at her school — graded up to the high school in the interim period. Others graduated virtually, like my oldest did from college some months after her school was shuttered and arrangements were made for seniors to complete the work they were denied in class virtually.

The thing about the public school district my children are in is the hub of this educational wheel is located such all of the social aspects of the last year were on full display. The high school and one of the feeder elementary schools (which my children attended) are on adjacent property. Right across the street is a shopping center, the nearly omnipresent layout of an anchor store with attached strip mall that seemingly plagues every growing area these days, with outparcels that constitute a Mickey D’s, chain drug store, and two more strip malls. These are not to be confused with the other shopping center, consisting of an anchor grocery store and strip mall, which share a parking lot with another strip mall catty-corner and a half mile away and bordering the other side of the school property. This, I’m told, is progress. Huzzah for that.

Anywho…

That anchor grocery store is a daily visit, the one that I use the most, and as someone who cooks and uses food as self-therapy is very much one of my happy places. Most of the workers there know me, even masked up, since I’m there so often. Now that the first day of school has belatedly arrived, I’ll no doubt be there even more, since the convenience of passing by so many good eats is irresistible. Having lived in this community for a while it is more common to stop and talk to someone I know than it is not to . So, for the better part of the last year our community has had the interesting social experiment of one side of the road being business as mostly — if masked — usual for shopping, Starbucks, McDonald’s, restaurants, even the yoga and workout places, while the other side of the road has been a cordoned off area forbidden to teachers, students, and parents alike. The vast majority of people that frequent the one is the same for the other, you see, so the conversations at the open places of commerce frequently focus on the closure of the places of education nearby and the disruption to all our lives.

We should, of course, believe and follow the science, and anecdotal evidence is not science. In a county that, as of the moment I write this, has had 25K cases of Covid resulting in 284 deaths to join the 11k state-wide and the 545K nationwide death totals, the numbers are insufficient to tell the human toll of this virus. Each of those deaths and sicknesses has a blast radius that varies case-by-case and circumstance-by-circumstance on the loved ones involved. The experts of science, whom we are to believe and follow, dictated mask usage and social distancing. Anecdotal evidence, not scientific so not to be believed and followed you understand, shows this community was rather compliant with those edicts and pleas. Mask usage remains very high, the dedicated employees of the grocery store wipe down your cart or basket while spacing out folks coming and going, and folks for the most part seem to make a good effort in distancing and respecting each other. Lines are not as crowded as they once were, a year’s worth of habit showing ingrained change. That change hopefully will last past the pandemic when the queues at self-checkout get a bit rowdy on a paycheck Friday or the coupon warriors sally forth with their binders and indefatigable knowledge of how much everything is going to cost them.

Even during the “total lockdown” last spring when no one was supposed to leave their home except for “necessary” things to the point that some were given papers to prove they were essential workers, the grocery store remained opened. As it should have; folks have to eat and be supplied with the other necessities of life. Hours of operation changed, procedures changed, but there was never a time you couldn’t go into the same grocery store you always did to get whatever you needed as long as you followed the science and guidance of the day to do so. Folks might not be able to quote infection rates, or the epidemiology of viral diseases, or what the latest press conference told us common folks, but for the most part they inherently knew to take the issue seriously, to be considerate of others, to follow the science as best they could. That’s progress, folks at least trying to make informed decisions.

Those real-life realities are where the frustration with the school closures come from. Schools are not grocery stores, of course, and housing the 2K students of a high school eight hours a day plus transportation to and from is a different beast than running commerce at a grocery store, or Starbucks, or yoga studio across the road. But folks don’t just follow science and experts, and when their anecdotal evidence raises questions of how the same people can do the one and not the other, frustration builds. How the same folks whom now are educators and they see in the grocery store, or McDonald’s, or Starbucks everyday are saying there is no way they can safely be across the road in any way, shape, or form. A year’s worth of frustration builds into this, unfair as it may be, but it’s real, and no amount of dismissal as being “only anecdotal evidence” or rebutting with the science of the moment — which tends to change, frequently — lessens those feelings for many.

Those feelings have their own blast radius as well, and parents and students who have a lost year of education are adapting and overcoming. It would be wise for those who use “the science” not only as a tool but a sword and shield to realize that and deal with things as they are, instead of just waving numbers and stats at real folks with real concerns about their real lives. The administrators and powers that be would be wise to understand they are dealing with students who are very online, and very informed. My own student informed me of the policy of “no zeros” where grades were going to be moved to no-lower-than a 50 to compensate for work not turned in on virtual learning months before it leaked publicly. Students know better than parents that education is not just about learning, but is also a business whose factories are school buildings and products are they themselves to keep the profits of funding flowing. They may not call it that, but the feeling of being a replaceable cog in a very big wheel became very apparent to students over the last year of virtual-only learning. Folks, including students, will believe and follow the science, but trust is earned and the folks who want compliance better make sure they are on the level with a citizenry that can Google. That would be progress, having a bit of humanity and humility when insisting on absolute devotion to numbers and stats that have no agency but can affect human lives plenty. Among the many losses to Covid over the past year, the loss in faith in their educational and political leaders by a generation of students might be of longer consequence than many folks know right now.

So, on this first day of school, things were a bit different. There was a mask, and a backup mask, that of course had to be color-coordinated with the kid’s outfit the way some do shoes, or shirts, or bags. There is a queue in front of the school, since there is a check-in process of temperature checks and questions to answer in addition to the normal first day chaos. This district is still only operating for a “hybrid” two days a week, but it’s still better than no in-person at all we’ve been doing for over a year. Now comes the hard work for students, teachers, and parents alike of adjusting once again to yet another “new normal.” At least, until we change again. It will be interesting to watch the reactions to the schools finally being re-opened in this community. As I told my own children today, try not to worry about it too much, after the first day, and the first night of online reaction, it will probably change some again before settling into whatever this new normal will be between now and summer.

I’m sure the discussions over the produce, or in the checkout line, or at Starbucks, will be really interesting about this first day of school. Just like they have been for the last year. At least now we are talking about the events across the road at the school in the present tense, not in the future or only as a thing of the past. That, at least, is progress.