Chris Selley: Let your kids outside, for God's sake, even if it's a bit smoky
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It sure took me back. This sort of messaging only undermines the larger cause of public health. And speaking of which: 'I think for a child with underlying asthma, who must be outside, I would recommend wearing an N95 mask,' Green told the Star, somewhat paradoxically. 'But really, as much as possible, we should be keeping all children inside.'
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We should be keeping all children inside as much as possible. In July. Even if they're not especially vulnerable to smoke. After screwing up their lives for three years during COVID-19.
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No. No, we should not be doing that. Obviously.
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Whether you think school closures were justified or not during the pandemic, at all or to the truly extraordinary extent Ontario took it, at this point we should be exploring every avenue to remedy the damage. And that does not mean trapping kids inside because the air quality's a bit crap.
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That pandemic-era damage is huge. Of course it is. One of the most bizarre rhetorical phenomena of the pandemic was people arguing it wouldn't really do kids all that much harm not to go to school for a year or two. If that were true, why on earth do we spend so much money on K-12 education in the first place?
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The anecdotes from teachers and child-care workers about socially maladjusted and academically delayed kids keep piling up. So does the academic research: 'The pandemic has left its mark on their behaviour, mental health, social skills and their education,' BBC reported last month. 'Childhood experiences … tend to have an outsized effect on life trajectories because they can alter brain development, behaviour and overall wellbeing.'
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Standardized test scores have crashed in Britain, where schools were closed for considerably shorter periods of time than in Ontario and Quebec. And we did basically bugger-all to compensate for it except graduate struggling kids anyway and send them out into the world and hope for the best.
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Meanwhile, perhaps not coincidentally, the verb 'swarming' has gained new prominence with respect to gangs of feral youths attacking innocent people — homeless people, pizza franchisees. We will never know if they reoffend, because we can't know their names.
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The most Toronto Star part of the whole affair: Alongside the article advising children to stay indoors if at all possible, the paper ran another article quoting an expert explaining that people aren't even safe from wildfire smoke inside. You should close all your windows, a University of Waterloo professor advised (because, obviously, everyone has air conditioning). You should even consider taping the windows shut, the Waterloo prof advised, because homes have 'leaks and cracks' through which wildfire-smoke particulates might invade your home.
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That's absolutely bananas. How far should parents go? Pull their kids out of day camps or sleepover camps? Cancel all their kids' summer recreational activities, hopefully including some unstructured capering around in their neighbourhoods? I don't think parents are that dumb or hysterical. The media they consume shouldn't be either.
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