The Bridge with Peter Mansbridge - The Back To School Experience -- Keeping Things In Context

Episode Date: August 31, 2020

Lessons from the first weeks of the school return in Germany. Is there something for us to learn? And crunching the "bridge daily" numbers. Welcome to Week 25.

and hello there peter mansbridge here with the latest episode of the bridge daily and welcome to week 25 here we are on the mond Monday of week 25 of the Bridge Daily. Ever since we started mid-March, covering at that time what was the single focus issue. That single focused issue was and still is for many people COVID-19. We've also touched on other issues as well, the U.S. presidential race, which we have now built a podcast into this podcast called The Race Next Door, which comes to you on Wednesdays when I'm joined by Bruce Anderson. lot of people and that is the whole issue of equality surrounding what has been the Black Lives Matter issue but that has brought so many other issues about the differences within our communities and how we're trying to deal with them. But today focus is primarily on COVID-19 and a couple of issues. I don't think there's probably a Canadian out there who listens to this podcast who hasn't been thinking, at least in some part today, about the issue of kids and students going back to school.

Because starting this week, and for some I think it actually started even last week, and going over the next couple of weeks, whether they're grade school students or high school students or college or university students, this whole issue of going back to class is one that families from coast to coast to coast are grappling with. And it's a tough one, as we have explained more than a few times. So one of the things one looks for at a time like this is how others are doing. Now, one of the countries that in some ways

has been similar to Canada's in terms of how they've dealt with the whole pandemic is Germany. You know that I've spoken many times about my admiration for Angela Merkel, the leader of Germany, and how she has handled the situation. Now, bigger country, much bigger population, was hit hard, but not as hard as countries around Germany, like Italy, like France, like Spain,

a number of other European countries, including the U.K. in that grouping. But Germany, not the best. I think Denmark's probably the best in terms of actual numbers. But Germany's done pretty well. They've had their challenges, and they've had their problems, but overall not too badly. Their schools have opened, and the early results are coming in,

in terms of how they've been dealing with this. And so I want to focus a little bit on this, because obviously one learns from others in a dealing with this. And so I want to focus a little bit on this because obviously one learns from others in a situation like this. The Canadian numbers, you know, have shown spikes in the last little while, especially in Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta, and B.C., the western provinces.

B.C. and Alberta and Manitoba, the worst of those four, in terms of the numbers going up recently. Atlanta, Canada, still, you know, very few cases. Ontario and Quebec suffered the most initially. They're still dealing with issues now, and their numbers have gone up somewhat, but they're overall are pretty good. And so is the Canadian number overall pretty good. Canada may be being tested right now and add that testing that's going on now to the situation with schools going back. And this next month is going to tell a lot about where we are in dealing with this pandemic.

But let me get back to Germany, because I think there's some interesting things that can be taken from the German experience. And I raise this because, well, if you read the New York Times, especially the Sunday New York Times, then you will have heard some of this before. But if you haven't, you're going to, I think, find it interesting. And even if you have, it gives you some reason to think about what's going through. The minds of a lot of Canadians, a lot of teachers,

a lot of kids, a lot of school administrators, school boards, and provincial governments, because we know in this country the provinces control education. So let me read you a little bit from the start, because this will give you an idea and I'll give you a couple of facts. But Katrine Benhold from the New York Times wrote this piece over the weekend, and it's datelined out of Berlin. On the Monday after summer vacation, Dirk Kui was as nervous as he had ever been in 31 years of teaching.

For the first time since the pandemic hit, all 900 students at his Berlin school were back bursting with excitement. The dreaded call came just two days later. A girl in sixth grade had the coronavirus. Mr. Kui hurried over to the gym where the other 31 students in her class were enjoying their first physical education session in five months. They were sent home immediately. On Thursday, the whole class got tested. On Friday, all the tests came back negative. And on Monday, half the children were back in class. But just as Mr. Cui allowed himself a sigh of relief, a seventh grader tested positive.

It's been a total roller coaster, said Mr. Cui, headmaster of the Heinz Berggren Secondary School. That may be what returning to school looks like for the foreseeable future. So that's how Katrine Benhold began her article in the New York Times yesterday about going back to school in Germany. There are a couple of things that I want to highlight out of this article. You can find it. I mean, obviously, you have to subscribe

to the New York Times to find it. I mean, obviously, you have to subscribe to the New York Times to get it. But if you do, it's well worth the full read. So as North Americans, this is Katrine's article still, as North Americans anxiously debate how to reopen schools and more campuses cancel in-person lessons, and there have been a lot of that happening. Staying online lessons, but cancelling in-person lessons. Europe is a living laboratory.

Despite a sharp increase in corona cases in recent weeks, even countries that were badly hit last spring, like Italy, Spain, Britain, and France, are determined to return to regular classes this fall. Germany, which was far less affected at the peak of the pandemic, shuttered schools early and moved to a hybrid model of remote and in-classroom learning. Class sizes were smaller and strict social distancing rules helped keep infection numbers in check. But now a new experiment is underway.

Teachers and students have been summoned back to classes, testing whether the new vigilance is enough. A couple of other points from the same article, because I think there's a lesson. There are lessons for us here. Social distancing and face masks are mandatory on most school grounds, but rarely inside classrooms. Despite recent advice from the World Health Organization,

the children 12 and over wear masks when distancing is impossible. If students have to wear masks for several hours a day, the argument in Germany goes their ability to learn would suffer. Instead, schools aim to better ventilate classrooms and keep classes separate so that each student has contact with only a few dozen others and outbreaks can be contained. Now, I've heard this from a lot of parents, especially those with young kids.

You know, I'm talking about early grade school. There is no way that they can wear a mask all day or even a half day. The kind of limit that they're finding with their kids is like 20 minutes to a half an hour max. We're talking inside. They just can't do it. And the Germans seem to have understood that already,

and they're saying, as you heard, got to wear a mask in the playground. Once they get inside the school masks are not needed in the classroom they're finding other ways to ensure safety and one of them is better ventilation whether that means opening the windows or they have a better better air conditioning system whether they've got desks set up in such a fashion that they're not close to each other, that's tough. The classroom sizes have got to be smaller.

And they clearly are doing that. And they are limiting the exposure that kids in one class have with kids in another class. simple fact of that is because if there's a breakout or an outbreak they're just dealing with one group of kids that one class because it will not have been exposed to other classes at least that's the hope what have they learned several weeks into returning to school, educators and even virologists who were skeptical about reopening say that early results look hopeful. Despite individual infections popping up in dozens of schools, there have been no serious outbreaks and no lasting closures.

This is early, but this is the early indications. Listen to this. Here's some numbers for you. Berlin is a case in point. By the end of last week, 49 infections had been recorded among teachers and students across the city. But thanks to fast testing and targeted quarantines, no more than 600 students out of some 366,000 have had to stay home on any given day. Of 803 schools, only 39 have been affected. Now, here's the lesson in perspective and in context, right? You could come on with a headline. 49 infections recorded among teachers and students in Berlin today.

Now, that sounds pretty bad. Not when you find out there are 366,000 students in the city. And you've only got 49 infections. And because of fast testing and quarantining and tracing, no more than 600 students had to stay home on any given day. That's worth keeping in mind, right? Those numbers. It's like when you, you know, like a weekend, I've seen the banners on some of the American cable stations,

America in crisis because of the situation in Kenosha, Wisconsin, which is terrible. Which was terrible. America in crisis? How about Kenosha, Wisconsin in crisis? Or Portland, Oregon in crisis? But America in crisis, or Portland, Oregon in crisis, but America in crisis? Can you imagine the number of cities across America where there was no crisis over the weekend, where there are no outbreaks of violence, where there may have been some peaceful protests,

but crisis? I mean, we really got to be careful. I was as big a guilty person on this as anyone in terms of the use of the language in newscasts. You got to be careful not to overgeneralize. There's a little bit on testing from that German story. Mass testing has been crucial for countries like Germany, which has led on many fronts in the pandemic,

keeping the number of deaths relatively low. Hospital and care home staff are tested regularly. People returning from vacation in hot spots can get free tests, and a positive result is generally followed by quick contact tracing. Now that regular classes have resumed, teachers are also offered free tests, even if they have no symptoms. Such practices, though imperfect, have helped reassure teachers, some of whom were reluctant to return.

At the Heinz Breggren School in Berlin, that's the one we started this talking about, the system proved effective in preventing a wider outbreak. The infected sixth grade, sixth grader, that one, the first one that came two days in, the infected sixth grader had no symptoms but was tested because someone in her family had tested positive. That relative was tested after tracing the contacts of someone else who had brought the virus home from vacation. That is effective A, testing, and B, contact tracing. And that's how that kid was pulled out of class and tested. The morning after the girl's parents notified the school,

a mobile testing unit from the local health authority arrived at the school and tested and interviewed all the children and teachers who had been near her. After every test came back negative, half the class was allowed to return to school. Those who had sat near the girl were told to quarantine at home for 14 days. All right. As I said, it's a great article and there's a lot of lessons in it and a lot of

things to keep in mind and to keep in perspective as we head into this next few weeks. And I don't have a young child going to school. So I have grandkids who are going to school, and I have my daughters who have to deal with this issue, one in particular, are going back and forth on the issue, but they also think it's really important that their kids get back to school. I've got one granddaughter's first year of university. It's going to be not much fun for her. She lives in Western Canada. She wanted to go,

being accepted, a number of universities, a chosen University of Ottawa. And so she will begin her U of O year next week. But she'll be doing it from home. Online. That's not what the dream was when you go to university. but you'll be doing it from home, online.

That's not what the dream was when you go to university. And my son, Will, as I told you before, is in fourth year at University of Toronto, and it's somewhat similar for him. I mean, it's his final year, and there's a lot of excitement attached to final year, but it's not like first year. So he'll get over it.

He'll be online, taking the course as well. It actually works with his lifestyle now because he also has a job. Anyway, that's my little bit on education today. As I said, that was in the New York Times I think you should grab it if you're in any way interested as you know I'm also I love the airport story because I love airplanes

and I love commercial flying and all of that but what are they going to do because most airline executives who you talk to, and I've talked to a few, really don't see this coming back to them for a couple of years anyway. So it gives them a couple of years

to be involved in the discussion around what should airports look like when things are back to some sense of normalcy. Because this will be wasted time. Quite apart from the fact they're losing millions, hundreds of millions of dollars, it'll be wasted time if they don't use this time to actually make changes to airports, to make airports better and easier to deal with situations like this. So this piece was, I saved it from last week,

it was on the Washington Post, Shannon McMahon wrote. And she did an interview with an aviation architect by the name of Ty Osbau of a global firm called Gensler that's designed many airports, including San Francisco, JFK, Los Angeles, and Incheon in South Korea. As he says, now is an opportunity to think, what do we want the airport experience to be three years from now? And the article has some really interesting ideas in it to be thinking about.

You know, there's going to be he sees the future airports and current airports being adapted to include things like major outdoor airport spaces that can be used as part of the airport procedure but outdoors still covered for weather in the sense but outdoors in the sense that there's a much fresher air. Now, some cities will be more adaptable to this than most Canadian cities, maybe except Victoria, maybe Vancouver. But outdoor airport spaces, touchless technologies, but mainly what he's looking at is a whole new way to get around

once travelers are health and security screened. Now, you've got to go from the start of thinking, what's your basic airport life? It's kind of two parts to an airport. There's the land side, sort of where you get out of the car or the bus or the taxi or the limo or whatever way you got to the airport, and you check in. Then you go through this middle process, which is security or what have you.

And then you're into the airside area of the airport, which is where you kind of hang around waiting for your plane. You either do that at the gate or you go shopping or what have you. His idea, Ty Osborne, is to figure out a way of getting from, A, the land side to the air side, literally from the sidewalk to the airplane door, in a much more convenient, faster, safer fashion. So in his vision of a new, say, Dulles Airport,

that's the one in Baltimore that services some of the people flying out of Washington who aren't using the Reagan Airport right downtown in Washington. In his vision of a new Dulles Airport, it uses personalized pods to get you from A to B. The iconic space of Dulles will become the primary airside dwell lounge where we wait for our flights. As departure time nears, passengers take autonomous individual pods to the gates, personally chauffeured to the aircraft.

Now, as the article says, that might sound like a little far-fetched to board a self-driving pod to your flight, but Heathrow Airport already uses small autonomous vehicles, that's the one in London, as transit from its business parking garages to terminals. Osborne envisions the one-to-four passenger pods as being sanitized between trips and replacing many airports' existing tram lines. There's no reason you couldn't do this in lieu of a train system, he says, like what Dulles and the Atlanta airport already have. I could see a scenario where an airport would mostly be individualized containers. So you're basically in a container being whisked back and forth in the airport.

Now, here's one of the big advantages of that. And it may be more advantageous when you're arriving than when you're departing. Arriving planes could shuttle passengers directly to their baggage claim, like right from the plane door to the baggage container, baggage claim. And those pods could implement a remote custom screening for overseas flights that would take place during the ride. That would mean no lengthy passport control lines, especially for returning citizens,

whose process wouldn't require much else than a document check. There's a bunch of things in here that I think are pretty amazing. Here's one that will be controversial if this idea follows through, Ty Osbo's idea. It's the touchless technology stuff. Because as it expands, he sees biometric screening. You know what that is?

It's known also as facial recognition. He sees that emerging as the new security screening and even the new boarding pass. Your face is your ticket, he says. No fumbling for tickets, no handing over passport documents. Airports around the globe have already begun to invest in facial recognition as a means of quickly processing passengers. But in the United States, and I think in Canada,

it's being met with questions about whether it's accurate, especially as studies show that it consistently misidentifies people of color. And wearing a mask, we're going to be wearing those for a couple of years, wearing a mask can also throw off the technology. What I think is important in this article, and it goes on in a lot of areas,

and you can find it at the Washington Post, what I think is important here is that people like Ospo are using the time to think about what we could do to make that visit to the airport run smoother, run more efficiently, run safer, run better. And I like some of the ideas he's got to start things off. Okay, we're coming to a close on day one of week 25 of the Bridge Daily.

There's one thing I'd love to update you on. And it's, you know, it's the huge staff here at the Bridge Daily kind of taking a nod to what they've accomplished. I was looking at the numbers on the podcast today, and I, you know, I really, I don't know how to read some of these things. Like tomorrow, we will have clicked over 750,000 downloads of the bridge since we went on the air, starting last fall in the election campaign. Then we went through three or four months of just a weekly podcast and then started up again 25 weeks ago on the daily,

the Monday to Friday edition. But 750,000 downloads during that period of time, so three-quarters of a million. I don't know. We average somewhere around 5,000 downloads a week. Sorry, 5,000 downloads a day. And the average podcast, so say the podcast people, not me, I don't know how they figure these things out. But downloads 50 podcasts. That's the average one. I mean, there are a lot of podcasts out there, as you well know. So the Bridge Daily, this little hobby podcast, does okay. Proud of that. And

one of the things that I've talked about over time and i wanted to check it as we hit this three-quarter of a million mark is how many countries have had people download the bridge daily obviously the number one country is canada and that's where the overwhelming majority of downloads are taken in can, from coast to coast to coast, all over Canada. But in total, there have now been 149 countries where somebody, at least one person in that country, has downloaded the bridge daily. Now, I'm assuming most of these are Canadians who are traveling in the world

or working elsewhere in the world or living elsewhere in the world. And it's sort of their connection home. But I can't remember the last number of the UN. I mean, there's somewhere around 180 or something countries in the United Nations. But 149 countries have had at least one person download the bridge. So take a guess at how many cities that represents, where there has been. And I can see every single city and town and community and village that has downloaded the bridge daily. I can see it single city and town and community and village that has downloaded the bridge daily.

I can see it on the list. Guess how many there have been. Take a guess. Let's say I'll give you four guesses. More than 1,000? More than 2,000? More than 3,000? More than 2,000? More than 3,000? More than 4,000?

There are your potential guesses. What do you think it is? What do you think the answer is? Well, if you guessed more than 3,000, you were right. As of today, 3,832 cities or towns or communities are registered in the Bridge Daily download list. Can you believe that? At the top of the list is Toronto. I guess that's not surprising.

Biggest city in the country. But there's a real race for second place between Calgary and Brampton. Then there's Etobicoke. And then Edmonton. And Scarborough, then Winnipeg. And rounding out the top 10, North Vancouver, B.C., Vanier, Ontario, and Burlington, Ontario. Don't worry, I'm not going to read all 3,832.

It would take me too long to even find who's in last place. But maybe I'll look for that later in the week. All right, there you go. The Bridge Daily for day one of week 25. Coming up this week on Wednesday, Bruce Anderson joins me for the Race Next Door, the podcast within a podcast. Friday, of course, is the regular weekend special, which are your letters.

I got some good ones over the weekend. But I need more. I always like to have a choice come Friday morning when I start going through them all. And if you want to write anytime about anything, don't be shy, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com, the Mansbridge Podcast at gmail.com. You can go to the website, thepetermansbridge.com, where you can find past podcasts, if you don't have them already,

and you can find whatever you want about me. And also there's a special page on there now for Extraordinary Canadians, the book I've written with Mark Bulgich that comes out later this year, November 10th. And there's quite the push going to be on this book on the part of certain bookstore sellers. And when I'm at liberty to tell you everything, I will. But we're very excited about that.

It's in the printer now. Everything to cover design, all that has been decided. But there's lots of information. Well, not lots, but there's some information available on thepetermansbridge.com, including directing you to where you can pre-order if you wish. This can be a hot seller this Christmas, right? It's going to be a hot seller.

Trust me, I know this. You want to get your orders in early. Anyway, it's a fantastic book. Looking at 17 really special Canadians, most of whom, if not all of whom, you may have never heard of before. But Mark and I decided these people were extraordinary, and we'll tell you why in the book. All right.

That is the Bridge Daily for this day. Thanks for listening so much. And we'll see you again in 24 hours. Thank you.