this post was submitted on 03 Dec 2023
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One of my siblings is going to school once a week, I think lockdowns definitely fried some brains.

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[–] [email protected] 94 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (5 children)

I think lockdowns definitely fried some brains.

Lol, love seeing chud convoy talking points here on hexbear.

Was it getting infected with a disease that causes brain damage 4 or 6 or 8 times already, watching their parents and guardians do nothing but feed them back into the meat grinder so they could go back to work?

No, it was the month they did remote school two years ago.

covid-cool

[–] [email protected] 78 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah people don't seem to realise that in some parts of the world remote school has been normal for decades. There are rural parts of my country where they had to do that long before covid.

What I think had more negative psychological side effects was watching grown boomers throw tantrums over wearing masks. Why would kids take anything seriously after that? Adults can't even do the bare minimum so why should they?

[–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago (4 children)

Nah Covid lockdowns definitely did something. Not saying they weren’t necessary, but the haphazard way it was done because America can’t think of anything through all the way means tons of kids fall through the cracks more than they already do normally. My wife is dealing with 4 year olds with pretty bad behavioral issues that clearly began when lockdowns started. Like these are clearly lockdown babies who were given unlimited access to technology and the internet and then all of the sudden had it taken away and now they have to sit in school in a regimented environment. How do you expect them to adjust to that? They can’t, they react like drug addicts having their drugs taken away. Not to put the blame on them, but this whole thing was not done with any thought at all and this is one of the consequences.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

My wife is dealing with 4 year olds with pretty bad behavioral issues that clearly began when lockdowns started

how were 6 month olds so wildly affected by lockdowns in spring 2020?

[–] [email protected] 29 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Can’t say for sure, but we think it’s a combination of parents working more since Covid unfortunately killed a lot of people especially older people who would theoretically be the support structure for daycare while the parents are working. Then there’s the addiction to technology, which was already bad pre Covid, but during the lockdowns and now post Covid is probably worse than ever. Also this isn’t something that just effects the prek kids, there is notable behavioral issues with all grade levels. I know it sounds like bullshit, but I’m telling you something happened to make these kids start acting this way and I don’t think the general assumptions of this thread that the lockdowns had no affect isn’t a very good one to take. The reason I bring up the smaller children at all is because the prevailing assumption ITT is that the reason these kids are acting this way is because of a generalized sense of despair, which might be true for older children, but doesn’t explain anything for the younger ones who as you said were only months old during the lockdowns. They barely have a concept of the color blue let alone any idea that climate change or fascism is a thing.

It’s very easy to think that teachers are just complaining and kids are no different than before or that they’ve always been like this, but when multiple veteran teachers are telling us first hand that these are easily the worst classes they’ve had in their careers that shouldn’t mean nothing. Teachers spend more time with the kids than their parents do pretty much, their first hand accounts should be taken seriously.

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[–] [email protected] 31 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

i mean the remote school went for a very long time from March 2020 until end of 2021 and early 2022. staying inside all the time could indeed change people's perceptions. like how most people don't even have proper timeline of events during lockdowns because of lack of anchor points.

Was it getting infected with a disease that causes brain damage 4 or 6 or 8 times already

yea i didnt say actual covid caused brain damage didnt make it worse.

watching their parents and guardians do nothing but feed them back into the meat grinder so they could go back to work?

what are you supposed to do? work went back to 'normal' before schooling did.

edit: i think people on this site look at western lockdowns during March 2020 and government assistance given during that time and think 'pog' but people's experience with lockdowns weren't the same in the Global South because there was no welfare or stimulus checks because of World Bank/IMF imposed deficit constraints. Many global south countries still haven't recovered from it (K Shape Recovery).

[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Maybe in some places lockdown went on for that long, but many places (including here) it was all of a few weeks and yet these problems are seemingly universal across the west (or at least North America).

It's the same as the argument that rampant sickness is from immunity debt. If the damage came from lockdowns, why is it just as bad or worse in areas that didn't have lockdowns or had short lockdowns? It's because it's being caused by COVID.

Not assigning blame to working parents who had no choice, just explaining how a stark early lesson in the capitalist meat grinder might change how you think.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago (3 children)

Yeah whenever people talk about the “problems caused by lockdowns” my response is “what lockdowns”

The “lockdown” here started on March 17th, 2020. By May pretty much everything was open, including bars. Schools reopened with the new school year, with a mask requirement (only thanks to the county going against the state’s ban on mask requirements for schools) that ended by the end of December.

They did nothing to improve ventilation, space requirements, etc. and obviously COVID spread rapidly in schools immediately. These kids just had an early end to the school year and then saw their parents thrown to the meat grinder before being shoved into one themselves. Oh and when they went back the school shootings went right back to higher than ever before.

One of the main reasons “kids are so bad now” is they literally don’t see a future, they’ve seen how little their lives are valued and while the kindergarteners may not understand climate change, middle and high schoolers definitely do and are staring down the barrel of it going “Oh none of this matters”

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[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago

bro I went through the lockdowns. Yes a lot of kids got covid but fucking every kid went through lockdowns, and it has had a marked impact on us. All your classes just became a joke and then the summer was basically identical to the school year, and you couldn't see your friends and all the summer activities were canceled and you spent all damn day with your parents OR your parents were considered disposable by society OR their work directly involved covid so you had that hanging over your head. The lockdowns were necessary, and should have been stricter, but that does not make them a good thing and doesn't mean they didn't have some very bad consequences for the kids that went through them.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

We shouldn't allow our understanding of phenomena to be determined purely by our opposition to the ideas of specific groups of people. That is basically the way in which chuds and to a lesser extent libs approach their analysis, and it's part of why they end up with such an incoherent understanding of things.

It's pretty clear that the need to socially isolate from one another for months at a time during the early period of covid had effects upon people. These have been shown in academic and governmental research. Hell, the entire experience of the pandemic was extremely traumatising imo. To be open to the idea that lockdowns had effects upon people's mental health, or upon the development of children (particularly young children for whom a few months is a significant period of their lives) is not to say that the lockdowns weren't necessary. But to deny any effects because you recognise that there was a need for lockdowns but see such a recognition as a chud talking point is ultimately to engage in the same kind of anti-scientific thinking as anti-lockdown chuds

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[–] [email protected] 62 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Average rent, 2000: $602

Average teacher salary, 2000: $41,807

Median house price, 2000: $119,600

Months to save difference between recommended housing budget (30% of gross) and rent to afford 20% down-payment:

(119600*.2)/((41807/12)*.3-602) = 54. If your 5-year plan is to have a house, you get there 6 months early (not really; teachers start at a lower wage)

Average rent, 2023: $1372

Average teacher salary, 2023: $66,745

Median house price, 2023: 430,300

Same calculation:

(430300*.2)/((66745/12)*.3-1372) = 290.

It's far harder to let some asshole kid push you over the edge when you're on the path to home ownership versus when that's either never going to happen or decades away.

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[–] [email protected] 53 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I think it is more covid causing brain fog, as well as them not seeing the point of trying in a dying world and getting sick of the charade of capitalist society rather than the lockdowns themselves.

Why in God's name would these kids care about playing house while the walls are caving in? Why would they respect a delusional society run by delusional adults?

They might not fully understand the nuances of the situation, but kids are smarter than people give them credit for. They know they were thrown to the wolves. They can sense that shit is collapsing and that the adults don't care about them.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago

My wife is a teacher currently working with pre K, but most of her time she’s worked with 4th and 5th graders. She tells me that there is definitely something going on and it was probably caused by the shutdown. It’s not that the shutdown was not necessary, but to be completely honest most people do not give a fuck about their kids development and during that time it’s hard to believe kids weren’t just on their phones and iPads the entire time watching garbage instead of being in school learning SOMETHING. She very much describes it as drug addicts having unlimited access to their drug of choice and then one day having it taken away. Of course they’re not going to adjust to the situation well. Again not saying the lockdowns weren’t necessary, but it really shows how little we're prepared for anything like Covid. I see a lot of people in this thread saying some wild shit that feels out of place with my wife’s experience at the time and also what she’s experiencing now.

[–] [email protected] 42 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

Covid frying brains + kids wondering what the point of education is because there are no jobs + lib teachers not knowing how to deal with fascists or communists + teachers being terrified of losing their jobs if they say that Columbus wasn’t a saint (for instance).

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (7 children)

I don’t see how so many people are saying this. My wife is dealing with similar problems with children as young as 4 they don’t know how to write their names let alone know what anything you’re describing even is.

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[–] [email protected] 40 points 11 months ago

As a teacher, I think this sort of doomerism about adolescents is both pointless and overblown.

[–] [email protected] 39 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (2 children)

Inevitable result of a purposeful plan to push for home schooling which basically requires the dismantling of public school institutions. All the teacher union busting and hyper fixation on which specific books some teenagers are reading and showing up to harass teachers and administrators over non-legitimate issues broadly (CRT, etc.)

It's the cross between hyper capitalistic and hyper religious society (or rather, those who are religious are militantly religious and want to force everyone else to follow their bullshit).

The trend will continue until... well, everyone already knows.

This is in no way the fault of zoomers and younger. They are victims if anything. This is the fault of capitalism ultimately and the privatization of everything including things which SHOULD be held sacred. Education, medical care, firefighters, etc. When they get privatized (or were never public) there is no longer any incentive to retain good teachers or to even teach for teaching's sake. It's all itemized and commodified. Every kid is potential profit.

And of course the religious zealots have their own agenda which is just a race to who can come up with the most homophobic, transphobic, racist, etc. bullshit inevitably leading directly to some sort of Nazi-like Christo-fascism.

Yay

[–] [email protected] 30 points 11 months ago (1 children)

This is something that definitely feels like is happening. A LOT of teachers have quit and are quitting because of Covid and its consequences. There’s no way that doesn’t lead to more privatization and home schooling where crazy chuds start raising their kids like “proud patriots” or whatever.

[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago (1 children)

It's been the plan for like 100 years, no joke.

Ever since the formation of public schooling in the US libertarians and Christians have been trying to tear it apart.

In the beginning public schooling was extremely popular due to obvious reasons. Parents generally want to see their kids get educated and do better than them in life. So the dissenting voices were ignored easily.

Since the 1960s up until today (the end of segregation- classic American moment for people to lose their shit) it's been a simmering subject. COVID and just broadly the last decade or so seems to be pushing it into a full boil.

They're smart enough to not openly push for abolishing education (usually) and that's why they push for state sponsored school vouchers which shifts funding from public -> private.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Yeah seeing the death of public school in real time is fucking wild. Especially the school voucher shit, it’s like watching the 2008 economic crisis as a Marxist and saying “WHOA DO NOT DO THAT OH MY GOD” but for public education.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

being a Marxist is like being the only one who knows fire safety at an indoor fireworks show and no one listening to you.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Didn't CRT and Transphobia culture war shit get much worse during COVID Era too? Especially because of constant right wing propaganda being fed to people, lack of access to treats, people being mad at basic health measures like masks etc.

i think the there has been effects on children outside U.S. too. in many global south countries, covid resulted in children dropping out of school and working. im not from the U.S so i do not have any empirical evidence about it (because all the research on this is western-centric) but i do think 2020-2022 did fuck up children psychologically.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago

I suppose an easy analogy (in the US, but other countries have right wingers copying the US. Brazil is an easy example) is how right wingers set up the dominos for literal decades for the fall of legal abortion (overturning of Roe v Wade).

In that case Trump being elected and/or RGB (supreme court justice) not resigning in a timely manner under Obama weren't the reason for the overturning of abortion as a right. It was just the last piece in the tower to be knocked out causing the whole thing to collapse.

I don't disagree that covid absolutely melted brains. But it's not JUST covid in a bubble. Covid mania (and, yes, lingering disabilities or after effects from the disease itself) was just adding accelerant to a fire that right wingers have been building for, I don't even know. At least 60 years (guess which ruling they really hated? Yes, that's right, Brown v Board of Ed that forced the end of segregation. So racists said "welp, I'll pull my kids out and teach them at home!") but the anti-public school freaks have been around since the beginning of US public schooling.

[–] [email protected] 36 points 11 months ago (2 children)

It's a really hard and stressful job and you get paid really badly for it. I haven't watched the video and maybe it's just a clickbait title, but the generational framing here seems unhelpful and misleading. Teaching has had a very high percentage of people leaving the profession for a number of years now. The reason is that teachers are underpaid, overworked and honestly underappreciated. This has only gotten worse and worse as neoliberal reforms have restructured both the profession and society. That might create the appearance of 'teachers can't stand the new kinds of young people we have now', but that isn't the underlying reason for people leaving the profession

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

I often try to reframe the same thinking when my mother complaints about her students. It is true that for the last 2-3 years though that the kids had an especially bad behavioral track, but with the new class the consensus seems to be more that they're better behaved in a general sense. I also try to point out that her generational framing is inaccurate since they're literally children and children of any generation can be absolutely awful. I also try to point out that in general most of the families that "aren't involved" likely aren't lazy, but instead overwhelmed with keeping above water that enforcing education becomes a lot more difficult.

Then there's the job itself, she's usually putting in 10 hours a day at school, brings home work some times, they don't get the planning periods they need, shortstaffing sometimes requires them to cover other teachers' classes, the special education department was gutted with them mainlining all but the most disabled of those students, they're constantly making changes in processes that really have no need beyond some administrator looking like they're doing something which leads to things needing complete reworks, when administration comes around they'll either spout out empty platitudes or just mostly ignore anything of import, administration will tear teachers down for not being a textbook teacher, and it goes on and on with stuff I don't see coming home. For all of this, my mother hasn't gotten a raise in like a decade now, she's at the top of the pay scale and at best she gets cost of living increases that maybe amount to a few hundred a year. I make more than her at the bottom of most nursing pay scales. When I first started at the hospital I made 28/hr, I make 40/hr outside of the hospital and make more than my mother that works more than I do because she's salaried. She also has way more qualifications than I do, I have a 2 year degree, she's Masters+.

All this is to say that in a similar fashion, I saw the video, thought the framing was reductive, and didn't click. Maybe they explain it better, but the generational framing when there's so much more to it, even if just clickbait, means that they're not properly looking at the underlying problems.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago

Completely! The demands made on teachers are completely untenable. My ex worked in a primary school and they would go to work at 7am, get home at 8pm, and then work the whole of Sunday doing marking/prep. They ended up leaving the profession because the stress made it physically impossible for them to continue. Most public sector workers are compensated appallingly, especially when you consider how important the work they do is. It's such a waste of resources to spend all this money and time training people for a profession only to place them in conditions where 50% burn out within 5 years. The Graeber argument about the inverse relationship between the usefulness of labour and its compensation feels so accurate

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago) (1 children)

The YT comments complain/mention everything but that the system in which the parents exist they are workers first, child makers second, and actual child rearers a distant third.

[–] [email protected] 23 points 11 months ago (3 children)

you simply can't have widespread failure of the system without it being a problem of the system

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The fact that conservative erosion of the US' education system has continued unabated throughout my entire lifetime makes me want to roll over and crumble to dust, but that's not a thing I can do

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

We need a site wide rule against this generation xyzwuh bullshit tbh, i mean look at this thread.

[–] [email protected] 27 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

basically this

school system is fucked up from cuts. Don't entirely agree with the way the song puts it but it's the rough idea

real uptick in gangs grooming children to sell drugs lately too

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago

Lockdowns may be part of it, but I think that like nurses, teachers are collectively hitting a breaking point of being underpaid and understaffed where a lot of them just don't see the career as viable anymore.

[–] [email protected] 25 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

The lockdowns caused a lot of stress, with people being put out of work and all sorts of shit we didn't deal with in a good way. All public help was temporary and never guaranteed in the first place. Rich people got a lot of free money in forgiven loans, though, so... cool?

Anywhere form 1-2 million people in the US died, 1 million are officially covid plus another million or so excess deaths, and several more million were disabled or got hit with severe long term health issues. Do you think having something like that happen to a caregiver would improve or hurt academic performance?

This includes a lot of teachers, as people who work with the public were hit pretty hard. Basically everyone who works a public job has been pushed to do more with less across the board, because there has been less workers to go around. If the bosses think they can get away with less workers they'll work you more until things start failing. "Aw shucks, it's a shame you have to do the job of three people, but nobody wants to work anymore. :(" This might be a bigger problem with GOP dominated states because they actually want public schools to fail.

Covid also causes brain damage and we are mass exposing kids to it, who then expose their families to it, thinking it's NBD because it's relatively rare for them to die from it. Who cares, whatever, it's just a cold. What would mass brain damage in kids look like anyway? Behavior problems? Memory problems? Impossible to say. What even is brain damage, anyway? They probably just need some tough love.

Also, If you look at the stats, some states did better than others, it doesn't necessarily show the lockdowns themselves caused all the problems. IIRC, Florida was doing worse than California in terms academic scores, even though Florida ended the lockdowns ASAP. California scores improved slightly during lockdowns. Every state had to scramble and had to figure something out with little guidance and some of them did poorly.

[–] [email protected] 22 points 11 months ago

teachers are just tired

[–] [email protected] 21 points 11 months ago* (last edited 11 months ago)

Is it the system that's problematic and needs reforms? No, it's the children that are wrong!

Here's how GenZ and Gen Alpha are killing Gen X industries.

[–] [email protected] 19 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Probably a number of factors. City schools are experiencing this more than suburban schools. Budget cuts, lockdowns stressing a sector already on shaky legs, and the routine switch-up had a big impact on a lot of young people. Not even them, plenty of adults seem to have been psychologically damaged by the lockdowns.

Will this become evened out by future generations that didn't experience lockdown? Maybe. But there's still the lingering issue of budget cuts and the presence of far-right movements in school boards.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 11 months ago (1 children)

Overworked parents that are forced to spend more time finding the means to provide for their children than actually raising them.

I think unrestricted early access to technology exacerbates it a lot. I had an iPad by the time I was in 3rd grade, but my parents limited my use, and there weren't as many dopamine frying apps. A lot of exhausted parents today will let their kid spend hours at a time on their tablet; and it's not like making kids play outside is common anymore in an unwalkable country that fear mongers kids getting kidnapped the second they're away from their parents

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