I’m not particularly happy about it, but I’d rather there were another way to turn this into a teachable moment instead.
This is the teachable moment. "Hey kids, class is canceled. Why? A solar eclipse. Go watch it." What's more significant to a kid than a no school day? It's only a benefit that there's something incredible going on in the sky at the same time. Trust me, the vast majority of these kids are likely to be outside to see the eclipse.
I'd rather see them experience it with supervision from professional educators who've read the paperwork on how to do this safely, and to explain what's happening with an above-average level of accuracy.
What is so hard to understand about "don't look directly at the sun"? We trust these people to do it every other day without paperwork.
What's so hard to understand about "vaccines prevent disease"? And eclipses don't happen every day. People are curious and will do stupid things.
That's got nothing to do with the point I was making about the people in question (ie: professional educators) being sufficiently qualified to understand not to look directly at the sun without "reading paperwork". Besides which that is basically their whole fucking job; "reading paperwork" about things and then presenting the information to children in a way they can understand.
They were going to have the PA day later in April anyways. I think this is a good example of being a bit flexible!
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