A total solar eclipse swept across the country this week, displaying a natural wonder. Rather than take advantage of an engaging science lesson opportunity, hundreds of school districts with hundreds of thousands of students are focusing on the safety of students who may accidentally view the eclipse without proper eye protection. Based on the above concerns, we decided to close the school that day.
Even worse than not teaching students about science, the decision to close schools for the eclipse leaves students with irrational fears about their safety. If you want to understand why young people experience alarming levels of anxiety and have difficulty developing into competent adults, you only need to look at examples like the over-cautiousness shown by schools regarding the eclipse. .
To objectively understand how unreasonable it is for schools to close during a solar eclipse due to safety concerns, look at how incredibly unlikely the eclipse is to cause harm to anyone. Let's. Indeed, you should wear safety glasses when looking directly at the sun during a solar eclipse. However, instances of people staring into the sun without protection and causing permanent and severe damage to their eyes are so rare that they are cut down to almost zero.
In 1999, a total solar eclipse occurred in southern England, a region of 99 million people. A total of 14 people suffered eye injuries from the incident, most of which were mild and temporary, according to an article in the British Journal of Medicine.
In fact, a previous study of the solar eclipse in Turkey found that a small number of injuries were very temporary, with “only 10% of people affected having permanent visual impairment to the point where they can't read car license plates.” It turned out that he had suffered an injury. [license] He won the plate at the 25-yard mark. ”
The only serious injury recorded from the UK solar eclipse occurred after someone “looked at the sun for approximately 20 minutes without any protection”.
If a school fails to distribute widely available safety glasses and prevents students from staring into the sun for 20 minutes without safety glasses, the school has such a lack of behavioral control that it is closed for the day. Instead, it should be closed permanently. .
Please note that eye damage can also occur if a student repeatedly stabs the eye with a pencil. Presumably, the school has enough behavior controls in place to avoid closure due to concerns about pencil blindness.
Hundreds of school districts across the country have decided to close for safety reasons, despite the fact that the threat to students' health from a solar eclipse is as small as the threat from a pencil.
In Arkansas alone, 104 school districts with 163,954 students, about 35% of the state's total, were closed due to the eclipse. More than 200 school districts have closed in New York state. In Ohio, more than 100 school districts have closed, including schools in Cleveland, the state's second-most populous city. Another 100 school districts were closed in Texas, Indiana, and Pennsylvania. Even in Louisiana, which was not in the path of the total solar eclipse, some school districts still closed “due to many people's safety concerns.”
It is sometimes said that you can never be too cautious, but in reality you can never be too cautious. Overcaution increases vulnerability in young people and impedes their ability to develop into competent adults. As Jonathan Haidt and Abigail Schrier describe in their recent book, crippling fears about the wider world have reduced opportunities for young people to physically gather and interact, leaving them dangerously isolated and distorted. We are forced into a virtual life.
Excessive anxiety makes young people less likely to get a driver's license, less likely to date, and ultimately less likely to form new families with their own children.
You can't blame all of this for the decision of more than 500 school districts to close this week because of the solar eclipse. But these closures can be seen as a manifestation of how public schools are failing children by emulating excessive and irrational concerns about safety. It is this excessive and irrational caution that has led to the closure of so many schools over the long duration of the COVID-19 pandemic, with dire consequences for both academic and social development.
During both the eclipse and COVID-19, public schools made decisions at the convenience of the adults working in the schools without consideration for students or families. Handing out safety glasses, walking outside to view the eclipse, and reminding students to use glasses can seem like a hassle to unmotivated teachers and administrators. They likewise dislike going on field trips to visit historical sites and cultural institutions. In their eyes, things can only go wrong if you step outside the safe confines of the classroom.
But most families don't want their children to be raised surrounded by virtual bubble wrap at school. They want their children to grow up to be competent and independent adults.
If we want to prevent the next generation from becoming paralyzed by fear and irrational concerns about safety, we need to shift power from overly cautious and unmotivated public schools to parents. When parents have school choice, they find a school that balances safety and exploration in a way that meets their child's needs, not the needs of the adults working at the school.