May 2009: Blog 5: Realizing the Potential for Overreaction

As faculty, if I worked at a school that closed in fear of the pandemic of the swine flu, I would find it to be an overreaction. I would be upset to have to stretch out the school year at the behest of city officials and decision-makers who are oversensitive to “moral panics” – those outbreaks of terror catalyzed by the press, but hardly validated by numbers or magnitude.

After reading about the school in Alabama that closed everything down for 51,000 students because of two cases of flu, I believe that, rather than preventing infection, long school closure would simply spread panic. The NYC Mayor, Michael Bloomberg, sees right through the irrationality of the panic. His comment that the eight cases confirmed at a city school were mild – and only a small fraction of the 100-some students who thought they had swine flu actually did – further buttresses my stance that school closure is unnecessary and unwise in this instance.

The tone and language of the SCUCISD press release – “The state health department is urging that the district’s staff, faculty, students and their household members to avoid contact with others” – is overly fearful. Add to the dictin of the edict the extent of time schools will be closed: until May 8^th or 11^th? What arbitrary reasons do the decision makers have for prolonging closure to that late date?! Decisions like these only contribute to the general brokenness of school systems. What students need is stability in times of uncertainty. Sick students, or any students whowent to Mexico recently, ought to be sent home, not everybody.