Education is not about child care

 Education is not about child care

 

Schools need to open up.  The economy needs to be restarted.  Parents need to get back to work so schools need to reopen.

What are we thinking??!

Yes, schools do need to reopen but it is not because families need child care so they can get back to work.   Schools need to reopen because, quite frankly, online learning stinks.

Yes I have heard that some kids are thriving on it.  I am not sure what exactly that means.   From what I have seen online learning involves a lot of worksheets, memory responses of information, and very little higher order thinking.   Yes Zoom and Google classroom allow for group discussion.   They also allow for individual cop-out.   Kids leave to use the bathroom.  Other kids in the house are on other computers or tablets.  Parents are doing their own work or have the TV blasting in the background.  

Good education is all about higher order thinking.  Students learn to develop concepts; they learn to write about them.  They also learn to discuss them.  Teachers encourage hands on learning.  Kids build stuff in the classroom.  They make change using real money.  They share text books.  And yes, they do those damnable worksheets too, but those are not the bulk of the day.  

We are heading into a lost year of education for our kids.   Does anybody care?  Is anybody there?   The people who should care the most seem to be worrying more about their own well-being and physical health.   In a recent Maryland county 68% of the families said they thought it was not safe for kids to go back to school.   Teachers’ unions seem to have totally forgotten their mission is to serve kids.  Early in the pandemic we called out health care workers as heroes.  And they WERE.   But when those heroes were interviewed they responded by saying that they signed up for helping the sick.  And many of those front line health care workers were not the highly paid medical profession workers.  Many were the health aides, the cleaning people, the nursing assistants.  They are not well paid but they are well committed to the mission.   Well teachers signed up for educating kids and mostly they seem missing in action.   Many love teaching from home and tending to their home business.  We already know that families with the economic means are leaving public schools for private ones.  Those schools are opening.  Those teachers are coming to school.  Those kids are getting a good education.  The teachers’ unions are the front line on this effort to keep teachers at home.  Their message is that the teachers won’t be safe.  Well when I look around those teachers who are worried about their safety are in the grocery stores, in the restaurants and in the shopping areas.  

Education is not about child care.  It is about preparing and educating our kids for their futures and ours.   It is time we started taking seriously what our kids are losing this school year.