It’s “an exercise in chaos theory”, said Manchester Mayor Andy Burnham about the proposal to open schools on 1 June. I know what he means, but it may be more than that. Education Secretary Gavin Williamson claims his concern is for the kids: “The longer that schools are closed, the more children miss out”, he said today. He then raised the emotional temperature:

The poorest children, the most disadvantaged children, the children who do not always have support they need at home, will be the ones who will fall furthest behind if we keep school gates closed. They are the ones who will miss out on the opportunities and chances in life that we want all children to benefit from what teachers and schools deliver for them.

We shouldn’t be fooled. He has conveniently forgotten that the poorest, most disadvantaged children are the creation of successive Tory governments over the past 10 years, a decade during which they imposed public spending cuts, benefit caps, and all the paraphernalia of austerity, the result of which is that “children do not have the support they need”. The only appropriate emotion, faced with his crocodile tears, is anger.

Johnson has said the argument for lifting the lockdown is not based on economics. But it is. The reason the government wants to get the children back to school is that it wants to get the workers back to work. It has nothing to do with the kids’ education and welfare, or with schools being the place where “they are safe and happy”, as Williamson also said today. It’s so that Mummy and Daddy can get back to manufacturing and producing and providing services and making profits for their bosses.

Another question lurks in the shadows to make us question whether Burnham’s chaos theory is a sufficient explanation for the push to end the lockdown. The New Yorker, in an article about the situation in the US, reminds us that some people

who argue for reopening sooner rather than later say that doing so will allow for a “controlled spread” of the disease, in which more people can develop a resistance and the population as a whole can achieve “herd immunity.” One problem with this approach is the projected number of hospitalizations and deaths along the way, which is very high. Another is that the idea assumes that those who have had COVID-19 will, indeed, be immune. But, as the World Health Organization recently warned, it isn’t yet clear how effective or enduring any immunity might be.[1]

I don’t know if there are still people arguing for herd immunity here. There certainly were earlier on, and they were at the heart of government. But if we reject it for the two reasons given in the New Yorker article, we should reject it above all because if we don’t we will be deliberately  trying to spread the disease (“allow for a ‘controlled spread’”). A lockdown and social distancing try to reduce the spread. That should be our aim. So let’s not reopen the schools.

[1] https://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2020/05/11/the-rush-to-reopen