I dissent from two current headline-making statements about whether schools should be open during this recent Covid-19 surge in November:
Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker: (Concerned that too many students are attempting to learn from home) “We all know that losing a week, a month, a quarter, or more in the life of a kid’s education has real consequences” (Boston Globe)
NYU Professor Scott Galloway: “And the fact that we haven’t been able to allocate resources to keep schools open, we are going to lose a generation of doctors, civic leaders, scientists.” (Yahoo Finance)
I find these views alarmist and disturbing. We have many serious problems with the pandemic, and generating fear about the long-term outcomes for our children’s academic progress is distracting and unnecessary. The premises of these comments contradict our general treatment of schools, and defy our own common-sense experiences. There are many reasons to prefer that schools be open right now, but the long-term results for our children are not among them. I propose that a more focused conversation might be more helpful to reaching a satisfactory solution for everyone.
I very much appreciate the urge many people have to get schools open as soon as possible. Many parents and families have established their lives on the assumption that children go to school during the day, and the absence of this structure is a genuine hardship. Parents can’t go to or focus on their work, and many families do not have the extended network of support required for stable mental health during this long period of having children mostly at home. Usually, when schools are closed, we have afterschool programs, weekend activities, and summer camps to choose from for help and relief. In 2020, we have almost none of these options available. I do not consider it an insult to recognize the role that schools play as child- care for young children and as a required place for older kids to be during the day. Collectively, we count on this aspect of schools, and we miss it terribly right now.
In addition, I see that many children are missing the social interaction, the camaraderie, and the simple act of going somewhere every day over these many months of closure. I have said before that one of the outcomes I expect from this pandemic is a strong re-statement of how much our culture appreciates school in its conventional form.
It is a hard conversation to balance the needs of families and children to have school open against the public health and safety need to bring the pandemic under some sort of control. I see division and anger, in the news at least, when people share their thoughts on what needs to happen right now. A public discussion of in-person learning vs. remote learning vs. hybrid options can devolve into frustration rather quickly, it seems. The data can be confusing or even contradictory. I suggest if we can focus on some actual needs, perhaps we can narrow the range of issues and arrive at some more consensus-oriented solution.
One thing we do not need to worry about is the long-term outcome for children. Inflaming this conversation by saying, “we are losing a generation of doctors, civic leaders, and scientists,” makes me stop listening. This concern doesn’t pass the most rudimentary analysis. First, that is not how schooling works! Our children who are having a bad year in school in 2020 due to COVID-19 are not going to be disqualified from future endeavors. There is no subject in school that either missing out on completely or having a bad experience with due to remote learning is so essential that our children will be restricted from future options. None. Just think about it for one moment, please. (And for our students in late high school who need credits for college admissions, their high schools are working with them to address that need.) No one will be excluded or left out because schooling was difficult this year.
Second, plenty of professional adults and others who have accomplished things in life may have had a bad year in school in which they learned very little. Just pause for a moment, and consider people who had a hard year in life. Or moved to a new school and felt unsettled. Or attended poorly-run, disorganized schools. Or had health problems for a year. Or simply got bad grades for a year. (Let alone everyone who had one lousy class each year while passing.) We know that having one crummy year in school does not ruin us for life. It is not helpful to pretend that it does. This sort of false stress is a negative hallmark of schooling in the best of times; it is especially unhelpful in these hard times. People struggling to manage their own lives this year do not need to hear that, unless they are exceptionally functional, this “lost year” will now set them back in a way from which there is no recovery. How does this sort of outlook support anyone who does in fact find ‘remote learning’ to be unappealing and in-person learning to be uncomfortably dangerous?
Learning is not an orderly process. We all learn things at our own pace, in different ways. There is no such thing as “missing 6th grade math” or “falling behind in English.” Or to the extent those phrases mean something, they are relevant only within the schooling framework, and not applicable in real life. Such “misses” are easily addressed short-term problems. Each of us has our own private list of academic subjects we didn’t learn well in school every year, and we have all had to find ways to proceed with our studies and careers with those lost opportunities. Indeed, this calendar year will be a lost opportunity for most students. But let us name that loss as the end of the problem, not the beginning of a panic-inducing, life- dooming prediction.
We could focus on what children are learning and doing as best they can in this pandemic. Often these things are not school-related, even simply emotional lessons on how to manage their own lives and outlooks given their restricted options this year. In terms of public policy, I wrote in this blog back in August that I support the concept of Safe Centers for Online Learning (SCOLs). Our students and families would benefit from a sustained commitment to online learning this year while opening our schools and other public buildings as welcoming places to spend the day within COVID-19 limitations.
With a bit of luck, and a bit of planning, and a bit of science, we may be near the lowest point of the pandemic. I certainly hope so. I look forward to having North Star be the in-person community-oriented program we intend for it to be. In the meantime, let us all express our needs for the coming difficult months and use our best creativity to address those needs.