Wear masks, don’t wear masks, get tested for COVID, get your temperature checked, social distance, close cafeterias, teachers wear shields, shields between student’s desks… all the New ABnormal in schools around the world.
For others, school days are at home.
Here’s the opening paragraph of an article in last Wednesday’s New York Times based on its recent poll of whether or not to send kids back to school:
“Parents across America are facing the pandemic school year feeling overwhelmed, anxious and abandoned. With few good options for support, the vast majority have resigned themselves to going it alone.”
Despite the demands and pressures of supervising children doing online schooling at home, the poll showed only 1 out of 7 parents were planning to allow their children to attend full time.
Four out of five parents were not able to count on help from relatives, neighbors, nannies, or tutors. In households where both parents work, three out of four replied one of them would be required to stay home to help with online supervision.
New York City is set to reopen the nation’s largest public school system on 10 September. But the United Federation of Teachers, an influential union, has stated it will sue the city and strike if certain safety demands aren’t met. While it is unlawful for public unions to strike in New York, teachers say they will circumvent the law by conducting “sickouts.”
Mayor Bill de Blasio responded by stating he would concentrate on the needs of students and families, not “political games.”
TRENDPOST: On the issue of whether or not to lock down schools, University of Edinburgh Professor Mark Woolhouse, a member of the Scientific Pandemic Influenza Group on Behaviours that advises the government, said yesterday, “Closing schools was not an epidemiologically sensible thing to do. Evidence shows that children very rarely transmit to adults and there is not a single documented example of a child transmitting to a teacher in school.”
The professor also confirmed the strategies we advised in numerous Trendposts: “Instead of concentrating on schools, we should have been concentrating on care homes. We were not really thinking about where the risk lies, just on suppressing the virus.”
Mr. Woolhouse reiterated what we had forecast when much of the globe was shut down in March: “Lockdown was a panic measure, and I believe history will say trying to control Covid-19 through lockdown was a monumental mistake on a global scale, the cure was worse than the disease.”
TREND FORECAST: There are two essential aspects to the go-to-school/ don’t-go-back-to-school movements:
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- “Interactive U”: As we had forecast at the beginning of the COVID-19 outbreak, when schools across the globe were shut down in March, it signaled the onset of a 21st century online learning system, “Interactive U,” forecast by Gerald Celente in 1996.
The new education system that will replace the current one, which was invented by the Prussians at the onset of the Industrial Revolution, will offer great investment rewards for OnTrendpreneurs® who wish to seize on this megatrend.
We suggest learning more about which nations, such as India, are on top of the “Interactive U” trend and moving forward to improve online learning technology.
Trend are born, they grow, mature, reach old age, and die. “Interactive U” is in its infancy.
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- Anti-School Tax Movement: The more people who are out of work, the less money businesses are earning, the lower wages fall… and the greater the anti-tax movements.
Primary among them will be strong citizen coalitions for governments to lower school taxes. The argument will be that with online learning, far fewer teachers will be needed and all costs related to brick-and-mortar school buildings will be substantially lower, thus, taxes should be sharply cut.
As we have noted, anti-tax movements, in addition to anti-vaccine movements, will serve as platforms for new Freedom Parties.