(NYT August 9, 2021 Daily podcast Back to School Amid the Delta Variant with Richard Fausset)
A recent podcast from the NYT, discussing mandates against mask-wearing in schools, opened with a comment about why kids need to get back to school. Fausset supplies a handful of reasons why kids need to be in school.
“I think there has been a consensus as we approach the coming school year that kids really need to be in school, they need to be together, they need to be in their seats, they need to be in front of their teachers learning together, it’s good for socialization, it’s probably good for ingesting and processing information…”
He lists underlying reasons for going to school that myriads of people accept without serious examination. Let’s examine them.
First, I accept that schools are between a rock and a hard place. To keep functioning under the current financial ground rules supporting schools, they cannot afford to lose students. I further accept that schools are necessary for many students/families. In a culture where so many parents work, schools have become an essential ingredient not only as a learning environment, but a childcare facility, a source of healthy meals and for some children a safe haven. I believe this is true and realize I have to lead with this caveat every time I want to discuss children learning. But those parents who have the luxury of taking a serious look at how schools operate and how children actually learn will see some glaring errors in Fausset’s reasons.
1. Students need to be together?? I think they certainly do not need to in order to learn, learning takes place everywhere in the world, not just in a classroom of your peers. Look at everything a child learns before even attending school! And many have argued that placing children with a whole slew of other children exactly their age in order to learn is not ideal; maybe it works for the institution, but I’ve never seen research suggesting that it is the best arrangement and out in the work world we don’t find ourselves surrounded by workers of the same age.
2. They need to be in their seats?!?!? I truly don’t begin to know how to address this fallacy. When I taught fourth grade, we were strongly encouraged to see that students didn’t spend their whole time in seats. We had lofts for kids to climb into and read or work, groups gathered in a multitude of spaces to work together, everyone on the rug together, outside etc.. Learning happens in so many ways, and in my experience freedom of movement allows for a much richer learning environment. If you need children to hear your lecture or complete worksheets or tests in a certain time frame, then having them organized into desks and seated works best. But that is not where the best learning happens.
3. They need to be in front of their teacher learning together??? Well, if a person wants to learn from an expert, a face-to-face experience can be an extremely rich and meaningful experience. But the evidence of learning that happens in homeschool environments and so much of the learning I experienced as an adult doesn’t/didn’t occur in groups in front of a teacher. It’s convenient for the teacher and the institutions but so not necessary for learning. And ‘learning together’ can be very inconvenient for some children. I remember sitting in a second-grade classroom, watching my son sit through a 35-minute math class discussing all the different ways numbers can add up to eleven. At home the night before he had been discussing exponents with his dad. And for the children who struggle with numbers, learning together can be competitive, alarming, and stressful.
4. It’s good for socialization!?!?! In a recent interview with a kindergarten teacher, she was explaining all the behaviors she needed her little students to acquire in order to be able to learn in the school environment. So much of the socialization that happens in school is so that students can learn more easily in school. Socialization for life happens everywhere in the world; schools don’t have a corner on the market.
5. it’s probably good for ingesting and processing information… His only reason that gave me pause was the only one he posed with uncertainty. Trained, insightful teachers provide many varied and powerful presentations of information that may suit different students’ needs, and that they may miss out on at home or as adults searching for their own meaning. And trained, insightful teachers may catch or recognized learning challenges that untrained parents and others may miss. But in my experience and my research this benefit doesn’t outweigh the others. A huge realization many parents and students discovered this past school year was that the learning that occurs in a seven-hour school day can be covered at home in an hour or two, often even less. And if problems occur, one can search out tutors, online support or other experts.
I express my views here because I think it’s important that the arguments for going back to classrooms should be based on valid reasons. The very idea that children have ‘lost years of schooling’ may be true, well let’s be reasonable and just say a year or a year and a half of schooling.” But that does not translate into a lost year of learning!! A tremendous amount of learning occurred, it just wasn’t only in the areas that schools test for, math and reading. And the learning that occurred may just serve children better in their future life than algebra might.
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