Covid Creates New Opportunities in Suburbs
/The Washington Times
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By George W. Liebmann – – Wednesday, September 23, 2020
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
There is gloom about the effects of the coronavirus crisis on cities. Office culture will never be the same, and telecommuting has spread from publishing to other businesses. This is true of law, with electronic filing, large corporations, with zoom technology.
General practitioners have discovered telemedicine. Reduction in office workers, together with panic-stricken closure regulations and the destructive hysteria of the BLM movement has devastated restaurants and small retailers, aggravated by dispensations given big-box stores and their greater sophistication in obtaining government aid.
Disgracefully, the smallest impact has been in education. Although language laboratories and math drills have been available online for decades, the education laws written by teachers’ unions, have obstructed their use. When COVID-19 struck, online courses were unavailable, and few public schools had assisted their students with necessary computers.
In colleges, jobs for the faculty had been given priority over the creation of remote learning institutions like Britain’s Open University and South Africa’s UNISA. America’s unionized teachers have not shared Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s view that reopening schools is a “moral imperative.” It is fortunate that America’s nurses have a different work ethic.
Large city commercial-property values and municipal revenues will collapse. Telecommuting will damage what Jane Jacobs referred to as “agglomeration economies”; professionals will gain less stimulus from meetings with fellows. Symphony orchestras and theaters will suffer from migration.
But there are positive effects. With two parents in a home in daylight hours, demand for institutional day care will diminish, a good thing. “Parents are apt to be fond of their children, and do not wish to see them made the objects of political schemes,” Bertrand Russell wrote in 1927. “The State cannot be expected to have the same attitude.”
There should be liberalized zoning, so that grandparents are not zoned into the next county. and new single-room family-run shops and restaurants can serve workers who no longer commute. This does not require apartment houses favored by “social engineers” but rather allows additional kitchens in owner-occupied homes and very small businesses, familiar in Germany and in the Amish country. Man is a social animal, and telecommuters want to socialize, dine and shop with their friends. Today, it is easier to open a one-room restaurant in Havana than in the suburban United States.
New restaurants and small businesses may cause the two-car family to become a thing of the past. Golf carts rather than gas guzzlers may proliferate, a boon to teenagers and the elderly. Orchestras have satellite campuses, whose audiences may expand when no longer reliant on exhausted commuters. The spoilt brat may give way to the delivery boy.
The “bowling alone” phenomenon may reverse itself. One-time commuters deprived of society in offices have more time for service clubs like Rotary, lodges and veterans’ organizations, and local governments and school boards.
There may be improvement in the Achilles’ heel of American society, high schools, now that unions have disgraced themselves. Additional civic manpower allows each school building to have its own community board, as in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The long-concealed possibilities of distance learning resemble the traditional English model of education: reading lists, discussion groups, comprehensive examinations set by outsiders and limited reliance on lectures and tutorials.
The American method of spoon-feeding and textbook learning, by the weakest graduates of the weakest colleges, has reached its limit. It is a hundred years since the headmaster Horace Taft decried teachers’ colleges (normal schools), where “Subnormal students are taught by abnormal teachers.”
American schools lag in science and in history, as the political hysteria generated by the BLM and #MeToo movements suggest. Before World War I, a German Rhodes scholar, Albrecht Bernstorff (later hanged by Hitler), wrote admiringly of the English method: “In England, every man is free to think what he likes. That is a frame of mind which we should seek to imitate if we are to preserve all the things which Germany has acquired in the last decades.” For “Germany,” read “the United States.”
There are substantial fortunes to be made from the installation of second kitchens, sale of light motor vehicles and assistance in the opening of very small restaurants and convenience stores, as well as institutions for more independent education. The new citizens and entrepreneurs of the exurbs have heavy political and economic tasks ahead of them, but worthwhile ones.
• George W. Liebmann, a Baltimore lawyer, is the author most recently of “America’s Political Inventors” (Bloomsbury, 2019) and other works on law and history.
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By George W. Liebmann – – Wednesday, September 23, 2020
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
There is gloom about the effects of the coronavirus crisis on cities. Office culture will never be the same, and telecommuting has spread from publishing to other businesses. This is true of law, with electronic filing, large corporations, with zoom technology.
General practitioners have discovered telemedicine. Reduction in office workers, together with panic-stricken closure regulations and the destructive hysteria of the BLM movement has devastated restaurants and small retailers, aggravated by dispensations given big-box stores and their greater sophistication in obtaining government aid.
Disgracefully, the smallest impact has been in education. Although language laboratories and math drills have been available online for decades, the education laws written by teachers’ unions, have obstructed their use. When COVID-19 struck, online courses were unavailable, and few public schools had assisted their students with necessary computers.
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In colleges, jobs for the faculty had been given priority over the creation of remote learning institutions like Britain’s Open University and South Africa’s UNISA. America’s unionized teachers have not shared Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s view that reopening schools is a “moral imperative.” It is fortunate that America’s nurses have a different work ethic.
Large city commercial-property values and municipal revenues will collapse. Telecommuting will damage what Jane Jacobs referred to as “agglomeration economies”; professionals will gain less stimulus from meetings with fellows. Symphony orchestras and theaters will suffer from migration.
But there are positive effects. With two parents in a home in daylight hours, demand for institutional day care will diminish, a good thing. “Parents are apt to be fond of their children, and do not wish to see them made the objects of political schemes,” Bertrand Russell wrote in 1927. “The State cannot be expected to have the same attitude.”
There should be liberalized zoning, so that grandparents are not zoned into the next county. and new single-room family-run shops and restaurants can serve workers who no longer commute. This does not require apartment houses favored by “social engineers” but rather allows additional kitchens in owner-occupied homes and very small businesses, familiar in Germany and in the Amish country. Man is a social animal, and telecommuters want to socialize, dine and shop with their friends. Today, it is easier to open a one-room restaurant in Havana than in the suburban United States.
New restaurants and small businesses may cause the two-car family to become a thing of the past. Golf carts rather than gas guzzlers may proliferate, a boon to teenagers and the elderly. Orchestras have satellite campuses, whose audiences may expand when no longer reliant on exhausted commuters. The spoilt brat may give way to the delivery boy.
The “bowling alone” phenomenon may reverse itself. One-time commuters deprived of society in offices have more time for service clubs like Rotary, lodges and veterans’ organizations, and local governments and school boards.
There may be improvement in the Achilles’ heel of American society, high schools, now that unions have disgraced themselves. Additional civic manpower allows each school building to have its own community board, as in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The long-concealed possibilities of distance learning resemble the traditional English model of education: reading lists, discussion groups, comprehensive examinations set by outsiders and limited reliance on lectures and tutorials.
The American method of spoon-feeding and textbook learning, by the weakest graduates of the weakest colleges, has reached its limit. It is a hundred years since the headmaster Horace Taft decried teachers’ colleges (normal schools), where “Subnormal students are taught by abnormal teachers.”
American schools lag in science and in history, as the political hysteria generated by the BLM and #MeToo movements suggest. Before World War I, a German Rhodes scholar, Albrecht Bernstorff (later hanged by Hitler), wrote admiringly of the English method: “In England, every man is free to think what he likes. That is a frame of mind which we should seek to imitate if we are to preserve all the things which Germany has acquired in the last decades.” For “Germany,” read “the United States.”
There are substantial fortunes to be made from the installation of second kitchens, sale of light motor vehicles and assistance in the opening of very small restaurants and convenience stores, as well as institutions for more independent education. The new citizens and entrepreneurs of the exurbs have heavy political and economic tasks ahead of them, but worthwhile ones.
• George W. Liebmann, a Baltimore lawyer, is the author most recently of “America’s Political Inventors” (Bloomsbury, 2019) and other works on law and history.
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A Thurston neighborhood resident and a Black Unity protester square off as Black Unity protesters left the Springfield, Ore., neighborhood after marching through the streets in Springfield, Ore. July 29, 2020. (Andy Nelson/The Register-Guard via AP)
What will you do when the mob shows up at your front door?
obj.0.content_object.caption
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In this image from video, former President Barack Obama speaks during the third night of the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020. (Democratic National Convention via AP)
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Illustration on the world direction during the trump presidency by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
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Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy addresses reporters at a news conference Monday, March 9, 2020, in Anchorage, Alaska. State officials said 23 people have been tested for the new coronavirus with no positive results. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)
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Before the pandemic hit, Social Security was on track to run out of funds in 2035. COVID-19 will likely hasten insolvency by at least one year and potentially more. (Associated Press file photo)
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President Barack Obama embracing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg prior to his State of The Union speech in January of 2016. (Associated Press) ** FILE **
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A protester carries a U.S. flag upside down, a sign of distress, next to a burning building, Thursday, May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis during protests over the death of George Floyd. Speaking at the Republican National Convention, President Donald Trump said, "The Republican Party condemns the rioting, looting, arson and violence we have seen in Democrat-run cities all, like Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago and New York, and many others." (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
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Voters line up outside to cast ballots in the general election at the Henrico County general registrar's office in Henrico County, Va., Friday, Sept. 18, 2020, on the first day of the state's 45-day early voting period. (Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)
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Illustration on Covid opportunities by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times
Illustration on Covid opportunities by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times more >
Print
By George W. Liebmann – – Wednesday, September 23, 2020
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
There is gloom about the effects of the coronavirus crisis on cities. Office culture will never be the same, and telecommuting has spread from publishing to other businesses. This is true of law, with electronic filing, large corporations, with zoom technology.
General practitioners have discovered telemedicine. Reduction in office workers, together with panic-stricken closure regulations and the destructive hysteria of the BLM movement has devastated restaurants and small retailers, aggravated by dispensations given big-box stores and their greater sophistication in obtaining government aid.
Disgracefully, the smallest impact has been in education. Although language laboratories and math drills have been available online for decades, the education laws written by teachers’ unions, have obstructed their use. When COVID-19 struck, online courses were unavailable, and few public schools had assisted their students with necessary computers.
TOP STORIES
Mark Levin calls 200,000 COVID-19 deaths ‘biggest lie this century’
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In colleges, jobs for the faculty had been given priority over the creation of remote learning institutions like Britain’s Open University and South Africa’s UNISA. America’s unionized teachers have not shared Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s view that reopening schools is a “moral imperative.” It is fortunate that America’s nurses have a different work ethic.
Large city commercial-property values and municipal revenues will collapse. Telecommuting will damage what Jane Jacobs referred to as “agglomeration economies”; professionals will gain less stimulus from meetings with fellows. Symphony orchestras and theaters will suffer from migration.
But there are positive effects. With two parents in a home in daylight hours, demand for institutional day care will diminish, a good thing. “Parents are apt to be fond of their children, and do not wish to see them made the objects of political schemes,” Bertrand Russell wrote in 1927. “The State cannot be expected to have the same attitude.”
There should be liberalized zoning, so that grandparents are not zoned into the next county. and new single-room family-run shops and restaurants can serve workers who no longer commute. This does not require apartment houses favored by “social engineers” but rather allows additional kitchens in owner-occupied homes and very small businesses, familiar in Germany and in the Amish country. Man is a social animal, and telecommuters want to socialize, dine and shop with their friends. Today, it is easier to open a one-room restaurant in Havana than in the suburban United States.
New restaurants and small businesses may cause the two-car family to become a thing of the past. Golf carts rather than gas guzzlers may proliferate, a boon to teenagers and the elderly. Orchestras have satellite campuses, whose audiences may expand when no longer reliant on exhausted commuters. The spoilt brat may give way to the delivery boy.
The “bowling alone” phenomenon may reverse itself. One-time commuters deprived of society in offices have more time for service clubs like Rotary, lodges and veterans’ organizations, and local governments and school boards.
There may be improvement in the Achilles’ heel of American society, high schools, now that unions have disgraced themselves. Additional civic manpower allows each school building to have its own community board, as in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The long-concealed possibilities of distance learning resemble the traditional English model of education: reading lists, discussion groups, comprehensive examinations set by outsiders and limited reliance on lectures and tutorials.
The American method of spoon-feeding and textbook learning, by the weakest graduates of the weakest colleges, has reached its limit. It is a hundred years since the headmaster Horace Taft decried teachers’ colleges (normal schools), where “Subnormal students are taught by abnormal teachers.”
American schools lag in science and in history, as the political hysteria generated by the BLM and #MeToo movements suggest. Before World War I, a German Rhodes scholar, Albrecht Bernstorff (later hanged by Hitler), wrote admiringly of the English method: “In England, every man is free to think what he likes. That is a frame of mind which we should seek to imitate if we are to preserve all the things which Germany has acquired in the last decades.” For “Germany,” read “the United States.”
There are substantial fortunes to be made from the installation of second kitchens, sale of light motor vehicles and assistance in the opening of very small restaurants and convenience stores, as well as institutions for more independent education. The new citizens and entrepreneurs of the exurbs have heavy political and economic tasks ahead of them, but worthwhile ones.
• George W. Liebmann, a Baltimore lawyer, is the author most recently of “America’s Political Inventors” (Bloomsbury, 2019) and other works on law and history.
SIGN UP FOR DAILY OPINION NEWSLETTER
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Please read our comment policy before commenting.
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obj.0.content_object.caption
Quiz: Can you guess the code names of these U.S. presidents and their first ladies?
A Thurston neighborhood resident and a Black Unity protester square off as Black Unity protesters left the Springfield, Ore., neighborhood after marching through the streets in Springfield, Ore. July 29, 2020. (Andy Nelson/The Register-Guard via AP)
What will you do when the mob shows up at your front door?
obj.0.content_object.caption
Quiz: Do you remember 1980s slang?
In this image from video, former President Barack Obama speaks during the third night of the Democratic National Convention on Wednesday, Aug. 19, 2020. (Democratic National Convention via AP)
Obamas remind American voters why they elected Donald Trump
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Illustration on Democratic Party tensions and the death of RGB by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
Ginsburg’s death punctures Biden’s carefully crafted ‘Seinfeld’ campaign
Illustration on common sense civilization by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times
Science and health experts, not common-sense citizens, have been failing America
Illustration on the world direction during the trump presidency by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
Why Trump should be reelected
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy addresses reporters at a news conference Monday, March 9, 2020, in Anchorage, Alaska. State officials said 23 people have been tested for the new coronavirus with no positive results. (AP Photo/Mark Thiessen)
Alaska Gov. Mike Dunleavy on COVID-19 and presidential campaign
Illustration on American morality by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times
Is America on the verge of substituting woke socialism for Judeo-Christian ethics?
Illustration on Congress and foreign policy by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times
For true conservatives, small government and endless wars are incompatible
Illustration on Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
For Justice Ginsburg, the Constitution unleashed the Court and government
Before the pandemic hit, Social Security was on track to run out of funds in 2035. COVID-19 will likely hasten insolvency by at least one year and potentially more. (Associated Press file photo)
COVID-19 exposes just how badly Social Security needs reform
Illustration on Covid opportunities by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times
COVID-19 crisis creates opportunities for family-run shops and small businesses
President Barack Obama embracing Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg prior to his State of The Union speech in January of 2016. (Associated Press) ** FILE **
Democrats are the real hypocrites in latest Supreme Court saga
Illustration on Trump's job creation by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times
Trump creates jobs. Biden destroys them. It’s not complicated.
An anti-Nazi poster circa 1932 Associated Press photo
Similarities between Germany’s Nazis and America’s ‘peaceful protesters’
Trump should nominate Amy Coney Barrett this week and in prime time
Trump or Biden will need to reset U.S. trade policy to stop China
Illustration on the revised view of Jimmy Carter by Alexander Hunter/The Washington Times
Jimmy Carter: Wonder boy at 96 but not much of a civil rights advocate in his early years
NEWSLETTERS
Breaking News Tammy Bruce Daily Jennifer Harper Weekly Bill Gertz Today’s Opinion Front Page Podcast Charles Hurt
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A protester carries a U.S. flag upside down, a sign of distress, next to a burning building, Thursday, May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis during protests over the death of George Floyd. Speaking at the Republican National Convention, President Donald Trump said, "The Republican Party condemns the rioting, looting, arson and violence we have seen in Democrat-run cities all, like Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago and New York, and many others." (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
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By George W. Liebmann – – Wednesday, September 23, 2020
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
There is gloom about the effects of the coronavirus crisis on cities. Office culture will never be the same, and telecommuting has spread from publishing to other businesses. This is true of law, with electronic filing, large corporations, with zoom technology.
General practitioners have discovered telemedicine. Reduction in office workers, together with panic-stricken closure regulations and the destructive hysteria of the BLM movement has devastated restaurants and small retailers, aggravated by dispensations given big-box stores and their greater sophistication in obtaining government aid.
Disgracefully, the smallest impact has been in education. Although language laboratories and math drills have been available online for decades, the education laws written by teachers’ unions, have obstructed their use. When COVID-19 struck, online courses were unavailable, and few public schools had assisted their students with necessary computers.
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In colleges, jobs for the faculty had been given priority over the creation of remote learning institutions like Britain’s Open University and South Africa’s UNISA. America’s unionized teachers have not shared Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s view that reopening schools is a “moral imperative.” It is fortunate that America’s nurses have a different work ethic.
Large city commercial-property values and municipal revenues will collapse. Telecommuting will damage what Jane Jacobs referred to as “agglomeration economies”; professionals will gain less stimulus from meetings with fellows. Symphony orchestras and theaters will suffer from migration.
But there are positive effects. With two parents in a home in daylight hours, demand for institutional day care will diminish, a good thing. “Parents are apt to be fond of their children, and do not wish to see them made the objects of political schemes,” Bertrand Russell wrote in 1927. “The State cannot be expected to have the same attitude.”
There should be liberalized zoning, so that grandparents are not zoned into the next county. and new single-room family-run shops and restaurants can serve workers who no longer commute. This does not require apartment houses favored by “social engineers” but rather allows additional kitchens in owner-occupied homes and very small businesses, familiar in Germany and in the Amish country. Man is a social animal, and telecommuters want to socialize, dine and shop with their friends. Today, it is easier to open a one-room restaurant in Havana than in the suburban United States.
New restaurants and small businesses may cause the two-car family to become a thing of the past. Golf carts rather than gas guzzlers may proliferate, a boon to teenagers and the elderly. Orchestras have satellite campuses, whose audiences may expand when no longer reliant on exhausted commuters. The spoilt brat may give way to the delivery boy.
The “bowling alone” phenomenon may reverse itself. One-time commuters deprived of society in offices have more time for service clubs like Rotary, lodges and veterans’ organizations, and local governments and school boards.
There may be improvement in the Achilles’ heel of American society, high schools, now that unions have disgraced themselves. Additional civic manpower allows each school building to have its own community board, as in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The long-concealed possibilities of distance learning resemble the traditional English model of education: reading lists, discussion groups, comprehensive examinations set by outsiders and limited reliance on lectures and tutorials.
The American method of spoon-feeding and textbook learning, by the weakest graduates of the weakest colleges, has reached its limit. It is a hundred years since the headmaster Horace Taft decried teachers’ colleges (normal schools), where “Subnormal students are taught by abnormal teachers.”
American schools lag in science and in history, as the political hysteria generated by the BLM and #MeToo movements suggest. Before World War I, a German Rhodes scholar, Albrecht Bernstorff (later hanged by Hitler), wrote admiringly of the English method: “In England, every man is free to think what he likes. That is a frame of mind which we should seek to imitate if we are to preserve all the things which Germany has acquired in the last decades.” For “Germany,” read “the United States.”
There are substantial fortunes to be made from the installation of second kitchens, sale of light motor vehicles and assistance in the opening of very small restaurants and convenience stores, as well as institutions for more independent education. The new citizens and entrepreneurs of the exurbs have heavy political and economic tasks ahead of them, but worthwhile ones.
• George W. Liebmann, a Baltimore lawyer, is the author most recently of “America’s Political Inventors” (Bloomsbury, 2019) and other works on law and history.
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TRENDING: DONALD TRUMP BREONNA TAYLOR BRETT HANKISON DANIEL CAMERON LOUISVILLE NFL RUTH BADER GINSBURG SENATE SUPREME COURT WHITE HOUSE
HOMEOPINIONCOMMENTARY
COVID-19 crisis creates opportunities for family-run shops and small businesses
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A protester carries a U.S. flag upside down, a sign of distress, next to a burning building, Thursday, May 28, 2020, in Minneapolis during protests over the death of George Floyd. Speaking at the Republican National Convention, President Donald Trump said, "The Republican Party condemns the rioting, looting, arson and violence we have seen in Democrat-run cities all, like Kenosha, Minneapolis, Portland, Chicago and New York, and many others." (AP Photo/Julio Cortez, File)
Media turns a blind eye on attacks on Republicans by increasingly bellicose ‘hard left’
obj.0.content_object.caption
Quiz: Can you pass a basic planet Earth science test?
Voters line up outside to cast ballots in the general election at the Henrico County general registrar's office in Henrico County, Va., Friday, Sept. 18, 2020, on the first day of the state's 45-day early voting period. (Bob Brown/Richmond Times-Dispatch via AP)
‘Not a big deal’: Noncitizens who voted illegally in 2016 still on voter rolls
obj.0.content_object.caption
Quiz: Can you name the actors who played these 1980s TV characters?
Crusader of ‘right to work’ laws a strong supporter of unions
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Michael McKenna
Ginsburg’s death punctures Biden’s carefully crafted ‘Seinfeld’ campaign
staff
Peter Morici
Why Trump should be reelected
staff
Victor Davis Hanson
Science and health experts, not common-sense citizens, have been failing America
View all
LATEST CARTOON
The Supreme Court Jester
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QUESTION OF THE DAY
Will Trump fill Ginsburg’s Supreme Court seat before the election?
Question of the Day
YES
NO
NOT SURE
View results
STORY TOPICS
EDUCATION
BLM
Illustration on Covid opportunities by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times
Illustration on Covid opportunities by Linas Garsys/The Washington Times more >
Print
By George W. Liebmann – – Wednesday, September 23, 2020
ANALYSIS/OPINION:
There is gloom about the effects of the coronavirus crisis on cities. Office culture will never be the same, and telecommuting has spread from publishing to other businesses. This is true of law, with electronic filing, large corporations, with zoom technology.
General practitioners have discovered telemedicine. Reduction in office workers, together with panic-stricken closure regulations and the destructive hysteria of the BLM movement has devastated restaurants and small retailers, aggravated by dispensations given big-box stores and their greater sophistication in obtaining government aid.
Disgracefully, the smallest impact has been in education. Although language laboratories and math drills have been available online for decades, the education laws written by teachers’ unions, have obstructed their use. When COVID-19 struck, online courses were unavailable, and few public schools had assisted their students with necessary computers.
TOP STORIES
Mark Levin calls 200,000 COVID-19 deaths ‘biggest lie this century’
Feds investigating discarded mail-in ballots cast for Trump in Pennsylvania
Hunter Biden’s network of wealthy, corrupt foreigners stretched from Moscow to Beijing
In colleges, jobs for the faculty had been given priority over the creation of remote learning institutions like Britain’s Open University and South Africa’s UNISA. America’s unionized teachers have not shared Prime Minister Boris Johnson’s view that reopening schools is a “moral imperative.” It is fortunate that America’s nurses have a different work ethic.
Large city commercial-property values and municipal revenues will collapse. Telecommuting will damage what Jane Jacobs referred to as “agglomeration economies”; professionals will gain less stimulus from meetings with fellows. Symphony orchestras and theaters will suffer from migration.
But there are positive effects. With two parents in a home in daylight hours, demand for institutional day care will diminish, a good thing. “Parents are apt to be fond of their children, and do not wish to see them made the objects of political schemes,” Bertrand Russell wrote in 1927. “The State cannot be expected to have the same attitude.”
There should be liberalized zoning, so that grandparents are not zoned into the next county. and new single-room family-run shops and restaurants can serve workers who no longer commute. This does not require apartment houses favored by “social engineers” but rather allows additional kitchens in owner-occupied homes and very small businesses, familiar in Germany and in the Amish country. Man is a social animal, and telecommuters want to socialize, dine and shop with their friends. Today, it is easier to open a one-room restaurant in Havana than in the suburban United States.
New restaurants and small businesses may cause the two-car family to become a thing of the past. Golf carts rather than gas guzzlers may proliferate, a boon to teenagers and the elderly. Orchestras have satellite campuses, whose audiences may expand when no longer reliant on exhausted commuters. The spoilt brat may give way to the delivery boy.
The “bowling alone” phenomenon may reverse itself. One-time commuters deprived of society in offices have more time for service clubs like Rotary, lodges and veterans’ organizations, and local governments and school boards.
There may be improvement in the Achilles’ heel of American society, high schools, now that unions have disgraced themselves. Additional civic manpower allows each school building to have its own community board, as in Great Britain, Australia and New Zealand. The long-concealed possibilities of distance learning resemble the traditional English model of education: reading lists, discussion groups, comprehensive examinations set by outsiders and limited reliance on lectures and tutorials.
The American method of spoon-feeding and textbook learning, by the weakest graduates of the weakest colleges, has reached its limit. It is a hundred years since the headmaster Horace Taft decried teachers’ colleges (normal schools), where “Subnormal students are taught by abnormal teachers.”
American schools lag in science and in history, as the political hysteria generated by the BLM and #MeToo movements suggest. Before World War I, a German Rhodes scholar, Albrecht Bernstorff (later hanged by Hitler), wrote admiringly of the English method: “In England, every man is free to think what he likes. That is a frame of mind which we should seek to imitate if we are to preserve all the things which Germany has acquired in the last decades.” For “Germany,” read “the United States.”
There are substantial fortunes to be made from the installation of second kitchens, sale of light motor vehicles and assistance in the opening of very small restaurants and convenience stores, as well as institutions for more independent education. The new citizens and entrepreneurs of the exurbs have heavy political and economic tasks ahead of them, but worthwhile ones.
• George W. Liebmann, a Baltimore lawyer, is the author most recently of “America’s Political Inventors” (Bloomsbury, 2019) and other works on law and history.
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