All episodes of The Michael Shermer Show

The Michael Shermer Show · 2025-04-26 · 56 min · 9,719 words

Did Shutting Down Schools Help or Hurt? A COVID-19 Postmortem

Listen to the original audio · Transcribed with NVIDIA Parakeet · Why times can differ in your player

You're listening to the Michael Sherman Show. Since you start with a personal story, how did you get into this? Tell us about your kids, your schools, and that's kind of what launched you into this. Yeah, at the very beginning of the pandemic, um I sort of went was went along with everyone else with what we were told to do. And um, that also involved school closures.

My kids were in third and fifth grade at the time, and it was it was very obvious basically immediately that This was not going to work for any long period of time. But, you know, I was I was happy is not the right word, but I was certainly agreeable to to go along with everything. I was not knowledgeable about what was going on with the virus or other things. I had limited information.

Um, what really set me on the path was watching my kids by themselves basically wilting away in front of the gray light of a Chromebook, each of them. And, you know, my son was in third grade, I mean, he finished his quote unquote remote learning in like 10 minutes. And so it's like 9.30 in the morning and he's like, okay, I'm done. Now what do I do?

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