Small classrooms, lots of students makes this very difficult in many places in the US.
Pretty bold claim. As you’re oft to point out, trying to compare the rest of the world to the US is pretty folly. Shouldn’t need to be explained why in the case of education.
Israel tried reopening school in early May and it didn’t go well. There were thousands students/staff infected, and schools shut back down.
We can barely get people to agree on whether masks are effective in the US, yet you want to talk about other parts of the world that have no reluctance to throw on masks when the need arises.
We can barely get our “centgov” to agree on guidelines for reopening (see Trump V CDC on guidelines for reopening).
We have a press secretary who has suggested science should not stand in the way of schools opening (as opposed to letting science GUIDE the reopening, which is what the few countries with open schools are doing).
We certainly aren’t going to throw the needed money at it.
And the US COVID situation has most certainly been more devastating than many other places around the world, like Denmark, that was able to reopen in their schools in part due to the fact that they are a tiny nation that locked down hard and fast, and never had major problems with outbreaks.
Figuring out logistics like this is part of why education associations in the US are generally calling for wholly online learning to start, or for districts to push back their start dates. There’s A LOT to figure out logistically-like “where are we going to get all the subs for high risk teachers to be able to teach from home.” Or “how do we make class sizes smaller without hiring more teachers, while also not overburdening teachers who we aren’t paying more money to do more work?” Or “how do we make sure every single student, including those who don’t have internet access at home, are doing their work, learning, etc.” Or what happens if a teacher’s kids attend a district that has shut down, but the district where the teacher works has not shut down?
This is a huge logistical mess, and instead of just slowing our collective rolls and making sure we get it right, we’re still in a HUGE RUSH to try to force things to return to normal immediately, and that’s not going to happen.