The current debates on schools and/or district requiring students and staff to wear masks involve two important considerations. The first concerns the value or efficacy of masks and I leave that to experts in the field. I am not a doctor, epidemiologist or maskologist. The second concerns the authority of the school and/or district to make and apply its own rules and here we are on a slippery slope. In this sense, I worry that we are careening towards a cliff.
One of the most important factors in teaching and learning is what is today referred to as "behavior management", aka discipline or control. In a class of 25 - 45, or an assembly of 2000 or a sports game of 5000, the person "in charge" needs his/her charges to be doing what is appropriate. Anarchists will insist that self-determination will ensure this. Teachers will respond that we need rules, and rules need that schools have the power and authority to create and apply them.
The First Amendment already places hurdles in the path of public district and public charter schools; as I have noted elsewhere. Private and independent schools have considerably more freedom in this respect.
Public health and safety mandates, I mean laws, have always told schools what they can and cannot do. Fire alarms, gas inspection certificates, first aid and child abuse and neglect training are all seen as "good things". However, these external obligations are not always popular, nor even complied with. Historically, states have required specific vaccinations such as MMR and DTP, although it is too often too easy to opt out of these. I read of an entire school district closed down because a parent hosted a "measles party" so willing parents could expose their child(ren) to the pathogen, thus putting every other family, and by extension person, in the area at risk of infection.
Yet these are not school issues. Such decisions are played out at the legislative level where every member of the school community has a voice.
What is a school issue is the ability to require something of its community, for example uniforms, underlining dates, or wearing masks. A school or district should be able to establish policies and procedures consistent with its mission, of course within the law and which of course should be published and easily available.
As of today, governors and legislators in Arizona, Arkansas, Florida, Texas inter alia have removed from schools the authority to require masks and/or vaccinations as anti-covid measures. This is wrong. Apart from anything else, broad-brush and one-size-fits-all cannot reflect the reality of each school, each district or each corner of a state.
One other thing which concerns me is that yet again, such a determination applies only to public schools. Although this particular blanket covers both public district and public charter, at least for now, non-public schools are exempt. Every single private and independent school in my area has a mask mandate, and require vaccinations of staff. I fully expect to see public schools closing and other disruptions to student learning, while non-public schools keep on happily keeping on. We have already seen a movement away from public schools to private and independent, and I do wonder if this is a factor in the calculus of these governors and legislators.
**Please leave your comments and queries below.**
Further reading
The problem with (and for) first amendmenters
The worst form of government, except for all the others
Arkansas governor says he regrets signing ban on mask mandates
How covid-10 boosted private school enrollment forever
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