One of the strangest things about the past four months has been the number and abruptness of the reversals we’ve endured.
Approximately a hundred years ago, when it appeared, for a minute, that Boris Johnson’s life was in peril, it was impossible not to feel bad for him (the moment passed). In New York the governor, Andrew Cuomo, berated in the early days of the outbreak for his slowness to act, went through a period of being widely lauded as a hero, before sliding back to his present state of tepid public approval, as a guy who spends all day bickering with the mayor and mishandling popular protests.
For parents of school-age kids, the biggest turnaround, however, has probably been in the way we talk about teachers. One of the earliest revelations of lockdown was, oh my god, how do teachers do this all day and why aren’t they paid more? Home-schooling was not, it turned out, a heaven of late start times, whimsical life lessons and days of endless bonding, but – in my case – a hideous grind of maths problems, writing practice, bribery, shouting, chaotic Zoom calls, and the constant refrain, “are we done, yet?” If the virus didn’t kill us, the worksheets surely would, but either way teachers had the hardest job in the world.
Four months later and how things have changed. The UK is slightly ahead of the US in terms of its willingness to reopen the schools, and it has been instructive to watch the debate – specifically, the backlash against teachers – as some kids returned to the classrooms in July. Everyone is tired, and grumpy, and blamey at this point, and it’s not surprising that the prospect of anything less than a full return to school in September has been greeted by parents as horrifying. Still, the swiftness to vilify those who, five minutes ago, we were busy applauding as heroes has been shocking. One assumes that the doctors, those entitled arseholes, will be next.
I haven’t been entirely immune to this reflex. In New York, once a global hotspot, the virus is now under control. This week we entered “phase 4” reopening, meaning that zoos (with pre-booked entry times), museums and most shops reopened, while swimming pools, gyms, and indoor dining remained closed. Meanwhile, parents were reminded that the best we could hope for in September was a blend of in-person and online learning, that would probably amount to a maximum of five days a fortnight in school.
Nobody wanted to hear this. If McDonald’s is open, the schools should be open. I heard myself say this more than once. There is no logic to it; no one is permitted to eat in at McDonald’s, let alone spend five hours – a school day – breathing on staff. Here’s another: bus drivers have to work, so teachers should, too. But buses in New York are running at 50% capacity, with the front quarter of the vehicle hived off behind plastic sheeting and passengers required to board – for free – via the back door.
The pushback against school closures hasn’t been helped by Bill de Blasio, the mayor, promising to create 100,000 free childcare places for state school kids half the week. Aside from the fact there are 1 million children in the New York public school system, as many parents pointed out, doesn’t switching venues, care-givers and groups of children on the off-days amount to a potentially greater exposure to the virus than just leaving them in school?
If this is true, it also overlooks the risk to teachers of a full-time return. In Florida, the teaching unions are suing the governor, Ron DeSantis, for mandating classrooms to reopen in full in August, despite a statewide surge in the virus. In New York and Washington DC, while wealthier parents are simply creating small learning pods and hiring private teachers, and most private schools, with more space and deeper pockets, are intending to go back full time, state schools are still up in the air.
None of this – not the impossible position of working parents, nor the deepening of inequalities if the schools remain closed – is the fault of the public school teachers, many of whom have their own kids at home. Yet it has been very hard, these past weeks, not to take the small endorphin rush that comes from trashing them, not because we have looked at the data and decided they are being over-cautious, but because we have had enough.
We are done, we want out, we have no more adrenaline left to burn. Last week, Cuomo released a Covid-19 propaganda poster, which depicted a surreal version of New York state under the heading “New York Tough”, but most people I know are feeling neither tough, nor phlegmatic.
Instead, the statement I am hearing is, “I expect it’ll be fine”, a peculiarly British form of defeatism that forestalls further introspection. I would like things to be normal. I would like a day in which I can work without the sounds of rival iPads blaring through the wall. I would like my kids to go back to school full time in September, and to that end, I’ve decided it’ll be OK; we’ll muddle through; why are the teachers making this so impossibly hard?
Whenever I find myself thinking this, I am stopped by a single image: that of the individuals I’m flippantly condemning. I love my girls’ school, and their teachers. It is one of the things that has made lockdown tolerable, the support and care of a really good local school, run by excellent educators, with a diverse student body. If the government can’t figure out how to fund safe reopening, the answer is not to yell at the teachers, these people we trust with our babies every day. And so I have flipped once again. If they say no, that should be enough.
• Emma Brockes is a Guardian columnist
