I was recently contacted by a journalist who asked me if there was any precedent for the current school closings in response to a health crisis.
My first impulse was to say “no,” based on my knowledge of history, but I started googling before responding.
I googled “school closings” and “1918 flu epidemic” and found this excellent article by Alexandra M. Stern, Marin S. Cetron, and Howard Markel, published in 2009.
https://www.healthaffairs.org/doi/full/10.1377/hlthaff.28.6.w1066
The authors wrote in 2009, in relation to an outbreak of the A/H1N1 influenza of that year:
”Nine decades before our current encounter with a novel strain of influenza virus, the deadly second wave of the 1918–19 influenza pandemic struck the United States. In response, most urban communities closed K–12 public schools for an extended period of time, in some locations for as long as fifteen weeks. Typically, the order to close schools came late in the epidemic curves of cities—weeks if not days after deaths from influenza and pneumonia mounted. School closure orders almost always were issued in concert with additional nonpharmaceutical interventions, such as quarantine, isolation, bans on public gatherings, staggered business hours, and orders to use facemasks.
”The U.S. historical record demonstrates that on multiple occasions, when faced with a contagious crisis that affects children, school dismissal and voluntary absenteeism are common responses. Past experiences also reveal that school dismissal tends to be applied by a particular community as a reaction, if not a demand, only after a contagious disease has spread through a community and not as a preemptive public health measure.”
During the deadly 1918 flu pandemic, many schools closed. The two biggest districts—New York City and Chicago—did not but intensified health screenings of students.
Some cities closed their schools for the duration of the health crisis, as long as 15 weeks.
Let us learn from the past to act, not react, and put children’s health first.
Diane Ravitch's blog 
The wonders of a good search on Google. Thank you and the historian who provided the information.
It is useful to remember that the pandemic of that era happened when hospitals were also dealing with the aftermath of WW I, with many wounded soldiers requiring care. This was true at Massachusetts General Hospital where my mother, then a student nurse, was recruited during the emergency.
The biggest problem is that children aren’t the ones dying….they are the carriers and are experiencing cold like or minor flu like symptoms. Yes, that’s a good thing and I hope children don’t start getting seriously ill and/or dying, but it’s the adults who are taking the hit on this one. I wonder how the anti-vaxing crowd will react to this when a vaccine is finally developed?
it feels almost like this is an exceptionally vicious marketing moment for exposing the blindness — and privilege — attached to refusing vaccines
Vaccines wiped out or nearly eliminated polio, measles, smallpox, mumps, diphtheria, typhoid fever, and other contagious diseases that ruined lives and killed people. I do not understand the anti-VAX movement.
Not perfectly related but not a complete tangent:
I just read in Simon Singh’s “Fermat’s Enigma” about the solving of Fermat’s Last Theorem. During WWII in Japan, schools were closed. Teenage students were forced into work.
“Goro Shimura, one year younger than Taniyama, had his education stopped altogether during the war years. His school was shut down, and instead of attending lessons, Shimura had to help the war effort by working in a factory assembling aircraft parts. Each evening he would attempt to make up for his lost schooling, and in particular found himself drawn to mathematics. ‘Of course there are many subjects to learn, but mathematics was the easiest because I could simply read mathematical textbooks. I learnt calculus by reading books. If I’d wanted to pursue chemistry or physics then I would have needed scientific equipment and I had no access to such things. I never thought I was talented. I was just curious.'”
Shimura and Yutaka Taniyama, after the war, attended college together and made an amazing discovery linking two totally unrelated fields of math…which decades later (1993) would lead to Andrew Wiles’ proof of The Last Theorem.
In Florida the governor finally shut down the beaches to avoid spring break mingling. Last weekend the policy was open beaches with social distancing, and the young people ignored the policy.
My grandmother died in the 1918 pandemic. She was only twenty-seven when she passed away. My mother was four, and my uncle was one at the time. My grandfather’s brother, a military doctor, also died in Europe where he was treating soldiers from WW 1. We need to take this pandemic seriously.
My aunt, a kindergartner in 1918 and a life-long Providence (RI) Public Schools educator, told me years ago about a long-lasting effect of the Spanish flu: the school vacation schedule still followed in most of the northeast. Schools were closed for a week eight weeks after the Christmas break, then again eight weeks later in April. Roughly eight weeks after that schools closed for the summer. The schedule was designed to break up the disease cycle.
You mean roughly eight weeks BEFORE schools closed for the summer. Very interesting. Thank you, sallyo57.
I meant 8 weeks after the April break schools closed for the summer.
I just read your original comment again and, for the life of me, can’t figure ou what confused me. Thank you for responding even if I did sound like an idiot!
In 1918, St. Louis was fortunate to have a health commissioner with foresight and a Mayor who listened to experts. At the time the city was in the 10 largest U.S. cities. Unknowingly, the city was writing the manual for social distancing, isolation through closures, and preparation that save thousands of lives. Truly a model for today’s pandemic.
“Even before the first case of Spanish flu had been reported in the city, health commissioner Dr. Max Starkloff had local physicians on high alert and wrote an editorial in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch about the importance of avoiding crowds.”
The Mayor listened.
Schools closed. Theaters, bars,restaurants and many businesses were closed.
By contrast, in the same month, Philadelphia boldly continue with a 200,000 person patriotic parade. Withing 72 hours, over 30 people died and within a week, 2,600 died – – compared to just a little of 1,000 dying in St. Louis for the entire stretch of the pandemic. Overall, 675,000 died in the U.S. – 1,700 in St. Louis.
The problem plain and simple is leadership. Leaders who listen, rely on experts, read, and see the whole board – leaders who see all the connections, see the evidence both prominent and less obvious, and know history.
In school terms –
If this federal administration were school superintendents, they would watch the weather forecast of a blizzard – they they would blame the television station of sensationalism to boost ratings, not bother getting on the 4 am conference call, ignore the warnings from the streets departments and meteorologists, and blame others reminding everyone of that time schools closed and the storm never came (which does happen).
Why federal leaders and our representatives do not learn from history or hold the president accountable for ignoring history and scientists is beyond me.
My grandmother that died in 1918 lived in Philadelphia. Thanks for the history on how the Spanish flu was handled.
Just another reason why history is a legitimate field of study.
For those of you interested in learning more about this, I highly recommend John Barry’s The Great Influenza. It’s incredibly well-researched and goes off on interesting tangents that fill out the big picture. For example, there’s a lot of info about how Johns Hopkins was the first real medical school in the nation and its work ultimately led to the creation of the National Institutes of Health and the system of peer reviewed research (writing of tangents, Johns Hopkins now has the most reputable COVID-19 tracker: https://www.arcgis.com/apps/opsdashboard/index.html#/bda7594740fd40299423467b48e9ecf6).
Barry traces the origins of the Great Influenza to a basic training camp in Kansas that was put together after the U.S. entered WWI. The soldiers basically spread the disease throughout the world as they landed in Europe. So using the Orange Catastrophe’s logic (just realized how twisted that concept is), the misnamed “Spanish flu” should rightly be called the American Virus.
Here’s a link to Harry Shearer’s podcast in which he interviews Barry: https://harryshearer.com/le-shows/february-16-2020/ Note the date and how many of his predications/fears are on the mark.
One of my favorite pastimes is looking through old cemeteries, which are ubiquitous in my part of the country. You can see the flu epidemic in almost every one. All four of my uncles came down with it. My father was the youngest at 7, and they all spent the flu on the sleeping porch of the old home place down in the Flatwoods. All four made it OK.
This was not true where life was difficult. The flu took a large portion of the community of Taylor’s Valley, Virginia. Nestled between three towering mountains in Southwestern Virginia, it probably took a third of its population.
The tragedy of the 1918 flu was that it came from the war itself and should be interpreted as part of the war dead. It apparently came out of China and was first recorded formally by Canadian doctors who found it on train loads of Chinese workers being taken to England to work in war industries. Unwilling to admit that people were dying lest their opponents take heart in the midst of a war of attrition, it was left up to the Spanish to report the matter to the public. By that time it was out and about.
It strikes me that the president’s downplaying of the matter in January was primarily motivated by his or his advisor’s fear of causing a stock market collapse, which he feared more than the virus itself. They were certainly right about that one. The irony is that much of the collapse was caused by the lack of decisive action.
My guess is that the stock market drop (crash?) That occurred would have happened regardless of what was done in the us because this is a worldwide pandemic, which affects the world economy of which the US economy is only a part.
What the President says might affect the stock market on one day or even a few days, but not the overall trend.
The other thing to bear in mind is that stocks were already overvalued and a correction was overdue.
Also, stock market behavior is also often driven by uncertainty and sometimes irrationality.
Reblogged this on Crazy Normal – the Classroom Exposé and commented:
During the 1918 Flue Pandemic, “Some cities (in the United States) closed their schools for the duration of the health crisis, as long as 15 weeks.”
In my country we closed out schools for the polio epidemic (here) in the 1940s – I think it was twice in a couple of year. It may be worth looking to see if it was the same in the USA.
I remember not being able to go to the county fair in the ’50s if the weather was hot and humid because of the danger of contracting polio.
Now, after refusing to shut schools so that essential workers had childcare, their solution is to provide that childcare using volunteer teachers working an unpaid second shift:
http://www.uftsolidarity.org/op-ed-chancellor-carranza-doesnt-care-about-volunteer-teachers/
Reblogged this on adaratrosclair and commented:
History. Do with it what you will, but I hope that what you will to do is wise.