Most European schools aren’t palaces. Schools have reopened anyway.

Yesterday, in an otherwise excellent article about Rhode Island reopening its schools, journalist Susan Dominus seemed to suggest that the hesitancy to reopen United States schools last fall — when schools across Europe reopened — was somewhat justified by conditions in our school buildings compared to other countries:

At the time, encouraging research in Sweden and China suggested the possibility of safety in schools, but it was hard to know whether those studies would be relevant to large American districts like Providence or Boston, with their aging infrastructure, their relatively crowded schools, their narrow stairwells and often-inoperable windows.

A consistent part of the anti-school reopening discourse in the U.S. has been that European schools were able to reopen because they are well-maintained and uncrowded in contrast with dilapidated and overcrowded U.S. schools. The reality is that Europe has some very nice schools and many not-so-nice schools — still, most of them have reopened.

Even social democratic Sweden has crowded classrooms. Here’s a lower secondary school — what Americans would call a middle school — in Gothenburg:

And what about social distancing? “The students are not allowed to touch one another, but there’s no way we can stay at arm’s length at all times. The classrooms haven’t suddenly grown larger, nor have the groups become smaller. Pupils and teachers are just sitting as close together as…