Argumentative Essay Sample: Masking in Schools Should End
We all know what’s been going on in the world for almost the past 2 years, COVID-19. COVID-19 has affected everyone’s lives in one way or another. One is to wear a mask in public and in school. You may like it or you may not like it, but are they really needed in certain places like schools? Masking in schools may not be as necessary as many of us think. Masking in schools should end because they have a large effect on students' learning abilities and only a small number of cons.
Children may be able to contract the virus, but they aren’t affected by it like adults are affected by it. Masking children may have some benefits but, “The benefits of masks in preventing serious illness or death from COVID-19 among children are infinitesimally small. At the same time, they are disruptive to learning and communicating in classrooms. They may be partially effective in shielding adults from COVID, but since when is it ethical to burden children for the benefit of adults?” (Sood). If there’s been proof that masks only prevent COVID in a small number of children, then why should they be wearing them if it’s the adults that should be following the rules to keep everyone else safe. On top of that, it affects children's learning especially younger kids because that’s when they’re learning the importance of facial expression and many other activities that require a face. This is one of the bigger arguments for masking children but another is vaccinating.
Vaccinating children and yourself is recommended by most professionals. Today we’re lucky enough to live in a world where we have all these vaccines and medicine. Many people believe in these vaccines but there are always people who think differently, comparing New England to the South. Most people in New England believe and support vaccines, but in the South, many don’t believe in vaccines and believe that they don’t work. Some stats can show this, “In highly vaccinated New England, the hospitalization rate right now for kids under 17 is about 7 per 10 million. That is not a typo. At the worst of the delta surge in Florida, the hospitalization rate for this age group was about 1 per 100,000. It has since dropped sharply in that region, and is now approaching 1 per million again. And these are overestimates of hospitalization risk for 5-to-11-year-olds, since the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s data lumps them together with the slightly higher-risk 12-to-17-year-olds” (Allen). In highly vaccinated areas like New England, hospitalization rates are practically 0, it’s that low. In a state that has struggled with COVID, like Florida has at the worst 1 in 100,000 hospitalizations for kids under 17 but now to 1 in 1 million. But some of these numbers have been overestimated because the CDC has clumped multiple age groups together, making the number seem worse than they are. So should these numbers the CDC gives out be trusted if they are overestimated? Though everyone can’t get the vaccine it’s still highly recommended by professionals to do so if you can, but if numbers go down because of vaccination rates going up, masking may not need to be required anymore.
Masking in schools doesn’t have large-scale evidence of there being any downsides. As Oster explains in the text, “Large-scale evidence on the particular question of masking in schools and development is lacking and is unlikely to ever appear. One could imagine exploiting differences across schools in mask policies to look at differences in learning outcomes, but you would rapidly realize in doing so that too many other things vary across these schools. There will never be anything convincingly causal” (Oster). Though there isn’t any large-scale evidence yet on masking being a developmental issue for kids doesn’t mean there isn’t. This situation as a whole is still a new thing, but over the next few years we’ll be able to tell because data like this doesn’t come up overnight, it may be a few years till there is enough evidence to tell whether or not the masks are a developmental issue. For now, the question is still up in the air.
Masking children in school affects their learning abilities. These are the years where children need facial expressions to develop. ”Masking is a psychological stressor for children and disrupts learning. Covering the lower half of the face of both teacher and pupil reduces the ability to communicate. In particular, children lose the experience of mimicking expressions, an essential tool of nonverbal communication. Positive emotions such as laughing and smiling become less recognizable, and negative emotions get amplified. Bonding between teachers and students takes a hit. Overall, it is likely that masking exacerbates the chances that a child will experience anxiety and depression, which are already at pandemic levels themselves” (Sood). When wearing a mask it does affect the child’s learning and bonding growth. Due to the mask, emotions are nearly all hidden, and that may raise the chances of those children developing anxiety or depression, which is also at one of the highest rates ever. Due to these expressions being hidden and negatively affecting children's learning, this should be the wake-up call for people to realize that masking young school children is way worse than they think it is.
Masking as a whole in school should end because of its negative effects on the students. The example to prove this argument is that masking in school affects the students' learning abilities because they are blocked by the masks. Young school children have very low chances of anything bad happening if they do contract the virus, they have a higher chance of something bad happening to them with the common flu than COVID-19. Lastly, simply getting vaccinated will help with removing masks in schools. In the end, this evidence should show that there are way more negatives than positives of masking children in schools.
Works Cited
“Mandatory Masking of School Children Is a Bad Idea.” USC Schaeffer, 16 July 2021, healthpolicy.usc.edu/article/mandatory-masking-of-
school-children-is-a-bad-idea/.
Prasad, Vinay. “The Downsides of Masking Young Students Are Real.” The Atlantic, 2 Sept. 2021, www.theatlantic.com/ideas/archive/2021/09/school-mask-mandates-downside/619952/.
“Opinion | Schools Should Do Away with Mask Mandates by the End of the Year.” Washington Post, www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2021/10/19/schools-should-do-away-with-mask-mandates-by-end-year/.
Oster, Emily. “We Need to Admit Masking Kids at School Has Some Downsides.” Slate Magazine, 8 Nov. 2021, slate.com/technology/2021/11/kids-school-masking-downsides-risks.html. Accessed 17 Nov. 2021.
