As I write this, we are 10 months into a worldwide pandemic that has had extensive effects on people’s lives. Even though vaccines have been developed and the first steps are being taken to vaccinate people against COVID-19, the pandemic may be coming into its most devastating stage—at least in the United States. One of the most difficult disruptions is that being experienced in K-12 education.
Even though school districts have conscientiously enacted accommodations due to the pandemic conditions, students have missed instruction, with as yet unmeasured results. In many homes, children have had the advantages of internet and computers to engage in remote learning, but in many others, the necessary resources simply have not been available. Parents have been called upon to occupy a much more central role in their children’s educations, which parents have done to the best of their ability while struggling themselves with un- or under-employment, working from home, loss of income, and the anxiety that comes from an ongoing crisis unique in the human experience.
Educators are concerned that children have missed instruction and are falling short of the benchmarks used to gauge student progress. There is concern that all children have been left behind. Not at all to diminish the concerns about the pandemic’s effects on education to date, I want to suggest some societal learning outcomes that may be helpful going forward.
- Parents are learning about schooling in new ways.
- Children and parents are gaining more appreciation for their schools and teachers.
- Teachers are gaining more appreciation for parents.
- As a society, we may be achieving a better understanding of how intertwined school, family, and work life are.
- At the economic level, could we be learning to better value schooling and with that valuation be willing to provide support for better educational outcomes?
Any one of these outcomes would be a positive development, paying huge dividends in the “new normal” of education in the post-Covid world. I suggest all of these as possibilities, not certainties; but the last one—which I have phrased as a question—falls even farther along the conjectural end of the continuum.
1. Parents are learning at several levels. Parents have always been called upon to help with their children’s homework; now many parents are engaging in what is essentially homeschooling with the virtual guidance of teachers. They have had to dust off their own academic skills and knowledge–perhaps reviewing or relearning their skills in mathematics and other areas. Moreover, they have had to learn new pedagogies, for the ways their children are learning may be very different than what they experienced in school. And, of course, the newness is amplified during the situation of on-again / off-again attendance, and schooling being delivered in a variety of formats including in-person, hybrid, virtual, and online. Along with their children, parents are learning skills for learning in new formats.
2. Children and parents are learning a better appreciation of their schools and teachers. Teachers are very important people in the lives of their students, and the forced separation and loss of time with teachers may leave some children and parents with a greater appreciation and higher regard for teachers and what they do and for the structure and stability offered by schooling.
3. Teachers are learning to better appreciate parents. I think teachers have always valued the support of parents in their children’s education. Teachers recognize that a supportive home environment has an amplifying effect on positive outcomes for children. During the pandemic, parental support has been even more crucial, as parents have been pressed into greater roles—going beyond “homework checkers” to at-home teacher aids. The pandemic has given new meaning the idea of a “homeroom” as a place for grounding and centering a child in the day’s instructional activities. Even more than before the pandemic, teachers can tell the difference parental engagement makes in their children’s learning.
4. As a society, we may be achieving a better understanding of how intertwined school, family, and work life are. This would be by no means a new outcome. Our very patterns and expectations regarding when school should be session date to an earlier agricultural economy when school was in session basically during the colder months when fields lay fallow. Farm families and the farm economy required children and youth to be “hands” for the work of planting, tilling, and harvesting crops. I think that was less a matter of exploitation of children than it was a matter of survival for the family including the children. The pandemic may be opening our eyes to the need to have better synchronization between scheduling for school and work.
The rhythms of families and communities have been disrupted by the pandemic. Previously, parents dropped young kids at daycare or preschool, saw the K-12 kids off to school, and went to work; then kids went to afterschool care/study programs, and the family had (very little) time in the evening for homework and extracurricular activities. During the pandemic, in many families one or both parents have found themselves at least part of the time spending the day at home with the kids—who went to school at the kitchen table. Music lessons, dance, athletics, and other extracurricular enrichment activities have been sharply curtailed.
Moreover, because some employers called for workers to return to work in communities in which schools had not yet opened, parents’ jobs were put in jeopardy because they could not leave their children at home alone. Employers have had to revise family leave policies and institute flex-time and work-from-home arrangements to keep some degree of balance between the needs of the workplace and their workers’ families. And, sadly, in many cases people lost their jobs, either because the employer could not preserve a position for someone unable to report to work or because the employer went out of business under the weight of disruptions due to the pandemic.
Based on gaining a better understanding of the interdependency of family, school, and work, perhaps there is potential to realize the next outcome in this list.
5. At the economic level, could we be learning to better value schooling and with that valuation be willing to provide better support for schools? The benefits of education are widely recognized, among them: better access to jobs, better preparation as citizens, and a richer participation in cultural life. A Pew Research Center Report says that among Americans who believe there is too much income inequality the great majority agree the best way to address income inequality would be for the government to invest in education and job training programs for people who are poor. Significantly, this is one of the few issues on which Republican and Republican-leaning respondents (at 81%) and Democrat and Democrat-leaning respondents (at 89%) largely agreed.*
But funding for schools is not enough. Educated and trained graduates need access to adequate jobs. Long-term plans and coordinated efforts of local, state, and federal government along with business leaders are necessary. A host of issues–not just educational policy–need to be addressed as part of the larger context in which schooling takes place, among them trade, taxation, and infrastructure development. As a good place to start, providing early childhood education in all communities would go a long way toward ensuring the effectiveness of all other efforts to improve educational outcomes. Coupled with childcare programs, early childhood education would help free parents of young children to work or improve their own education or training to improve their prospects for long-term employability.
Garry Breland 