Where is all that ‘kids in cages’ media outrage when it might actually do some good?
Sad scenes like this were the stuff of entire telethons back in the day. Poor schoolchildren forced into a claustrophobic space with a music stand and some kind of a large, unweildly instrument that defies all odds by being crammed in there with the hapless student…
But we’re getting ahead of the story a little bit. Let’s go back to the beginning.
After far too long of cowering fear of a virus, schools in lockdown states are dipping their toes back in the water and letting students return.
Even if it’s a ‘hybrid’ approach, splitting in-person and virtual learning, students are happy to have at least the beginnings of a return to normalcy, getting face-to-face human interaction as part of their routine again.
The Weenatchee World posted a story with glowing praise of how well the return to class was going at Wenatchee and Eastmont high schools, how excited the students were to be going back, what strategies they were planning to implement to deal with learning loss and all the rest.
Nowhere in the text of that article did they address the burning questions we had from the photos attached. The questions we had about the little plastic tents the band seem to be squeezed into.
In light of the startlingly low COVID transmission risk between students, is it possible they’ve gone overboard with their ‘proper precautions’?
This is band practice (source):
A casual observer might almost mistake it for a hostage situation. And then there’s this poor soul, poured into his confinement with a large and cumbersome instrument.
I, for one, have never tried to play a sousaphone, nor could I tell you how it differs from a tuba, but from here in the cheap seats, I can’t imagine how being squeezed into ‘tent 8’ makes learning how to play it any easier.
Can we stop teaching our culture to jump at our own shadows and do what has come naturally to us as a species since the dawn of history… learn to manage risks on our own?
