學(xué)校什么時(shí)候應(yīng)該為預(yù)防冠狀病毒而停課?

學(xué)校什么時(shí)候應(yīng)該為預(yù)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(xiàng)分析顯示，冠狀病毒的傳播迫使美國數(shù)百所中小學(xué)關(guān)閉，超過85萬名學(xué)生受到影響。而這些數(shù)字在未來幾天肯定會(huì)增加，因?yàn)閾?dān)心的家長(zhǎng)呼吁更多的學(xué)校關(guān)閉。

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

日益嚴(yán)重的健康危機(jī)給學(xué)校領(lǐng)導(dǎo)們帶來了一個(gè)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(jīng)關(guān)閉學(xué)校了，這是一個(gè)被證明有效的措施，它已被證明能夠減緩疾病的傳播，進(jìn)而拯救生命。但它也會(huì)造成巨大的經(jīng)濟(jì)和社會(huì)混亂，尤其是對(duì)孩子們來說，他們中的數(shù)百萬人依賴學(xué)校提供的免費(fèi)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(guān)閉學(xué)校，除非萬不得已。到目前為止，許多學(xué)校的關(guān)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?qū)W生接觸到病毒引發(fā)的。然而，研究表明，關(guān)閉學(xué)校的最佳時(shí)機(jī)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(xué)社會(huì)學(xué)家兼醫(yī)生尼古拉斯·克里斯塔基斯說：“如果你等著(學(xué)校)發(fā)生這種情況，你最終還是還是會(huì)關(guān)閉學(xué)校，但現(xiàn)在你已經(jīng)錯(cuò)過了獲得真正好處的機(jī)會(huì)。如果你早點(diǎn)關(guān)閉學(xué)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(diǎn)像在奶牛走丟后才關(guān)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(huì)的計(jì)算流行病學(xué)家。他用高等數(shù)學(xué)來模擬疾病爆發(fā)的過程，他還研究了關(guān)閉學(xué)校的問題。阿杰利說“有科學(xué)證據(jù)表明”關(guān)閉學(xué)?？梢酝涎訒r(shí)間，延緩疫情的高峰”，他說：“現(xiàn)在爭(zhēng)取時(shí)間真的很重要，因?yàn)槿绻阌泻芏嗳送瑫r(shí)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(xué)基礎(chǔ)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(shí)會(huì)如何影響學(xué)校關(guān)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(shí)仍然是，關(guān)閉學(xué)校是一個(gè)艱難的決定，因?yàn)闆]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(xué)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(xué)校首席執(zhí)行官索尼婭•桑特里斯表示:“對(duì)我們的很多學(xué)生來說，最安全的地方實(shí)際上是在學(xué)校。”這就是為什么她也反對(duì)因?yàn)樘鞖庠蚨Ｕn。“這讓我在暴風(fēng)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(hào)仍然是:關(guān)閉學(xué)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(xué)校領(lǐng)導(dǎo)擔(dān)心的一個(gè)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(rèn)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(dá)爾說。他擔(dān)心的是“一百萬華盛頓的孩子回家，因?yàn)樗麄冎?，?duì)于成千上萬的孩子來說，他們根本不會(huì)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(xué)校領(lǐng)導(dǎo)如此不愿關(guān)閉學(xué)校的另一個(gè)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。