The Importance of Opening All Schools

Ending COVID 

Why Schools Across the Country should be Opened 

If you have ever broken a body part such as an arm or a leg, you will be familiar with the concept of wearing a cast. Restricting movement of a broken bone, which requires a splint, sling, brace or cast, is critical to healing, to prevent any further injury from occurring. However when you remove the cast, the first thing you will notice is how different your body part has become. Healed and placed back in the correct position it may be, but how does it actually feel. Most likely it will be very weak, flaccid, and awkward for you to move around and utilize.

This is what happens when we freeze our body parts in time, by no longer using them. It only takes 2 weeks of non-usage of our body parts for bone atrophy to start. A similar situation can also occur to our mind. The concept of "use it or lose it," is never more apparent than in the case of our nervous system. The more you learn (how to do something) the easier it becomes to do everything, usually.   

This is particularly the case during the developmental stages of most humans. Starting from the age of 2 our mind works in overdrive to process the environmental information surrounding us and try to make sense of it. The more time spent in understanding our environment (from the ages of 2-18), the better we become at forming neural networks. After this stage the nervous system continues to develop throughout a lifetime, and we can continue to create new patterns as we age. However taking out the time to read and learn, along with socialize with individuals in our own peer group is crucial to our development as a species. 

Educational systems allow individuals to spend an allocated time everyday enriching ourselves in learning activities which develop the nervous system. Doing so results in a lifetime of healthy functioning and enforcing societal values which are learning based. Our society is based on healthy positive social interactions with other individuals, and this is first enforced during our early educational days.   

The immune systems of children are in different developmental stages than of adults. Having already been exposed to a wide variety of colds and fighting them of, they are highly unlikely to be impacted by novel viruses such as COVID. In addition, since they are at the first stage of living, and they have recently been vaccinated, they have healthy immune systems (in most cases).

While it is true that children of all ages can become infected with COVID, most who are infected, will not become as sick as an adult. In addition the vast majority will be asymptomatic. There are quite a few schools that have been open in the United States for sometime now, and they have not had any adverse effects regarding COVID openings. 

Children with preexisting health conditions such as asthma, diabetes, congenital heart disease, nervous system conditions, obesity, respiratory conditions, etc. might be at a higher risk of contracting respiratory infections such as COVID. However while most children of all ages can get infected with COVID (and other viruses), most do not become as ill as adults, and are usually mild or asymptomatic. 

Therefore while it is possible for children to contract COVID, it is unlikely that it will result in a life threatening circumstance, as most have mild symptoms or none at all. Hence it does not appear to be feasible to take the chance of closing the educational system preventing access to education.