It’s that time of year again, time to pack your offspring on a big yellow bus and hope that for the duration of the day that they are learning something.
With everything that’s been going on for these past few months, it’s likely that there’s just as much relief emanating from parents as there is trepidation about the return to school.
Taking care of kids is a difficult task, and in our “advanced” society, most people are . . .
perfectly fine with someone else looking after their children for most of the day. After all, the GDP isn’t going to grow on its own; there are widgets to be produced and currency to be exchanged for goods and services.
After months of Paw Patrol and tantrums, a lot of people will be relieved to get back to the daily grind. However, this will be the first big shift in the return to our pre-pandemic way of being.
In Quebec especially, there is definitely cause for concern.
This province has the highest number of confirmed cases and deaths per capita, more than doubling the provinces with the second largest totals. If Quebec was a country (don’t get too riled up, this is just a hypothetical), its death rate would be one of the highest in the world.
There’s a multitude of reasons for this, but our premier has chosen to lash out at the media rather than address the issues that have plagued his government’s COVID response. He has, on several occasions singled out the Montreal Gazette and in particular, their health reporter Aaron Derfel, accusing him of fear-mongering. Trying to shoot the messenger isn’t something that competent, confident leaders resort to. It’s a tactic reserved for those who have lost control of the situation.
Another attempt the CAQ made to control the message, mentioned in this column several months ago, was when they announced on St. Jean Baptiste Day that they would cease daily updates on case numbers and deaths. After significant and sustained backlash, the decision was reversed. This was all only a few short days after the health minister was demoted and replaced with the former head of the treasury board.
Swapping out an experienced minister in the middle of a public health crisis does not speak to confidence on the part of our elected officials. Much like these other moves Legault has made, it was done out of panic.
It’s against this backdrop that the province’s return to school is taking place and parents have every right to be nervous. Luckily, young children have largely been spared by this virus, and there’s evidence that the younger kids aren’t able to transmit it to others. But it’s not just the health of students we should be concerned with; teachers, bus drivers and other staff will all be dealing with the risk of infection. Just because we haven’t had any cases in our region thus far doesn’t mean that things will stay that way.
When schools partially opened back in May, only a small percentage of students returned to their classrooms. Now that a larger cohort is filling the halls, everyone is waiting with bated breath to see the outcome.
Life has to get back on track at some point, and keeping kids isolated from their peers and instructors for this long will also have a host of negative effects. Let’s hope that the preparations that were made are adequate.
As the Prussian Field Marshal Helmuth von Moltke famously said, “No plan survives contact with the enemy.”
Caleb Nickerson
