Despite high infection rates and new variants, Europe continues to prioritize in-person learning.

When the Wall Street Journal recently published an article claiming that “a consensus is emerging in Europe that children are a considerable factor in the spread of Covid-19” and “more countries are shutting schools for the first time since the spring,” opponents of reopening public schools in the United States were quick to treat the article as evidence that Europe’s much-vaunted school reopening policies were failing. A couple examples:

The reality is that there’s no European “consensus” about transmissibility of new variants or the need to close Europe’s schools to combat them. In this post, I want to try and disabuse Americans of the notion that Europe’s complicated winter school situation somehow supports those advocating extreme U.S. school reopening positions, such as mandatory vaccination of students before reopening.