學校什么時候應該為預防冠狀病毒而停課?

學校什么時候應該為預防冠狀病毒而停課?

The spread of coronavirus has compelled hundreds of K-12 schools in the U.S. to close, affecting more than 850.000 students, according to an analysis by Education Week. And those numbers are certain to increase in the coming days, as concerned parents call for more school closures.

《教育周刊》的一項分析顯示，冠狀病毒的傳播迫使美國數百所中小學關閉，超過85萬名學生受到影響。而這些數字在未來幾天肯定會增加，因為擔心的家長呼吁更多的學校關閉。

The growing health crisis presents school leaders with a painful choice.

日益嚴重的健康危機給學校領導們帶來了一個痛苦的選擇。

Closing schools — as has been done, so far, in China, Japan, Italy and elsewhere — is a proven measure that has been shown to slow the spread of disease and, in turn, save lives. But it also causes huge economic and social disruption, especially for children, millions of whom depend on the free and reduced-cost meals they get at school.

到目前為止，在中國、日本、意大利和其他地方已經關閉學校了，這是一個被證明有效的措施，它已被證明能夠減緩疾病的傳播，進而拯救生命。但它也會造成巨大的經濟和社會混亂，尤其是對孩子們來說，他們中的數百萬人依賴學校提供的免費和低成本的膳食。

Public officials don't want to close schools unless they absolutely have to, and many closures so far have been triggered by a known case of infection or exposure among staff or students. Yet research suggests the best time to close schools is before that happens.

政府官員不希望關閉學校，除非萬不得已。到目前為止，許多學校的關閉都是由一宗已知的感染病例引發(fā)的，或是由教職員工或學生接觸到病毒引發(fā)的。然而，研究表明，關閉學校的最佳時機是在這之前。

"If you wait for the case to occur [in your school], you still have wound up closing the school, but now you've missed the opportunity to have the real benefit that would have accrued had you closed the school earlier," says Yale University sociologist and physician Nicholas Christakis.

耶魯大學社會學家兼醫(yī)生尼古拉斯·克里斯塔基斯說：“如果你等著(學校)發(fā)生這種情況，你最終還是還是會關閉學校，但現在你已經錯過了獲得真正好處的機會。如果你早點關閉學校，本來可以獲得這些好處。”

"It's sort of closing the barn door after the cow is gone."

“這有點像在奶牛走丟后才關上牛倉的門。”

Marco Ajelli is a computational epidemiologist at the Bruno Kessler Foundation in Italy. He uses advanced math to model the course of disease outbreaks, and he has studied school closures. Ajelli said that "there is scientific evidence" that closing schools can buy time and delay the peak of an epidemic. "And it's really important to gain time at the moment," he says, "because if you have a lot of people that get infected all at the same time, the hospitals and ICUs have not enough hospital beds."

馬可·阿杰利是意大利布魯諾·凱斯勒基金會的計算流行病學家。他用高等數學來模擬疾病爆發(fā)的過程，他還研究了關閉學校的問題。阿杰利說“有科學證據表明”關閉學校可以拖延時間，延緩疫情的高峰”，他說：“現在爭取時間真的很重要，因為如果你有很多人同時受到感染，醫(yī)院和ICU就沒有足夠的病床。”

But this understanding is based on the science of previous diseases. Ajelli and his colleagues point out that there's something new and different about COVID-19. namely that children appear to be less vulnerable to it. And it isn't clear how that fact could affect the usefulness of school closures.

但這種理解是建立在以前疾病的科學基礎上的。阿杰利和他的同事指出，COVID-19有一些新的和不同的東西，即兒童似乎不那么容易受到它的傷害。目前還不清楚這一事實會如何影響學校關閉的效用。

The fact remains that canceling school is a difficult decision because no one knows better than educators just how much some children depend on the support they get there.

事實仍然是，關閉學校是一個艱難的決定，因為沒有人比教育工作者更清楚地知道，一些孩子在多大程度上依賴于他們(在學校)得到的支持。

"For a large number of our students, the safest place for them to be is actually in school," says Sonja Santelises, CEO of Baltimore City Public Schools. That's why, she says, she resists canceling school because of weather, too. "It gets me some angry emails during snowstorms and inclement weather. ... I will just tell you, our mantra continues to be: Closing schools is a last resort."

巴爾的摩市公立學校首席執(zhí)行官索尼婭•桑特里斯表示:“對我們的很多學生來說，最安全的地方實際上是在學校。”這就是為什么她也反對因為天氣原因而停課。“這讓我在暴風雪和惡劣的天氣里收到一些憤怒的電子郵件。我只想告訴你，我們的口號仍然是:關閉學校是最后的手段。”

One big concern for school leaders is that many kids would be going home to empty households.

學校領導擔心的一個大問題是，許多孩子將回到空空如也的家中。

"Yeah, I think that's the hardest contemplation for our districts," says Chris Reykdal, the superintendent of public instruction for Washington state, which has been hit hard by coronavirus. He's concerned about sending "a million Washington kids home knowing that for hundreds of thousands of them, they simply will not have any parents at home."

“是的，我認為這是我們地區(qū)最難思考的問題，”受到冠狀病毒重創(chuàng)的華盛頓州公共教育主管克里斯·雷克達爾說。他擔心的是“一百萬華盛頓的孩子回家，因為他們知道，對于成千上萬的孩子來說，他們根本不會有父母在家。”

One more big reason school leaders are so reluctant to close schools: Not only will many kids go home to no parents, but they also may not have ample food, either.

學校領導如此不愿關閉學校的另一個重要原因是：不僅許多孩子沒有父母，而且他們可能也沒有足夠的食物。