A news item this morning in our local suburban newspaper states that the Illinois High School Association (IHSA), the athletics association of the state's public and private high schools, is preparing to announce that high school football and other fall sports will be suspended. My initial reaction was surprise: surprise that the IHSA waited until late July to make this no-brainer decision. At the risk of stating the obvious, football is a contact sport. Given the reality of the pandemic, which had been abating in Illinois but now seems to be growing again, I can't think of a way to play football without putting players at risk.
The cancellation of the high school football season (and it's past time for you, NCAA, to follow suit for college football and other collegiate fall sports) is rational and necessary. That decision should have been inevitable but it isn't, because the urge to resume what is perceived as a normal school schedule, including normal activities like athletics, is powerful.
Much of that desire is rooted in human psychology: all of us want to get back to pre-pandemic normal life. But beyond our wishes and longings, there are other factors that contribute to the push to get back to school:
- A widespread sense that this past spring's forced experimentation in distance learning did not lead to good educational outcomes. One often hears words like "disastrous" and "catastrophic" bandied about, presumably by advocates of returning to the classroom. But even compensating for political hyperbole, my guess is that we can agree that distance learning is not optimal
- The economic reality that parents need to work, and many of them will not be available to supervise their children's distance learning during the school day. Even parents who work from home are not able simultaneously to supervise their children's education and do their own work
- Concern on the part of social workers, teachers and administrators that safety-net needs which are supplied in a school setting, including nutritious meals for food-insecure students and the identification of possible victims of child abuse, no longer will be able to be provided if students aren't at school
Advocates of return-to-school also note that, on the whole, children seem to be less susceptible to the virus's worst effects than adults, so sending children into a school environment doesn't seem to be an inordinate risk. Furthermore (they contend), education should be considered an essential activity, just like the provision of food and health care; just as we require supermarket workers and health care workers to risk their lives and health to deliver these essential services, we must ask teachers and other education professionals to do the same.
The primary opposition to return to school seems to come from teachers and their unions. They make the eminently reasonable points that, like all adults, they are vulnerable to the virus; some of them, because of other health conditions, are at high risk; and the health risks to their students, even though less than the risk to adults, are not zero. Some students have other health conditions which put them in high-risk categories. These skeptics pose the uncomfortable question: how many children's deaths will we countenance to accommodate a return to normal school? And beyond the health risks, they also note that school facilities were not designed to accommodate a pandemic. Many or most schools won't have sufficient space to allow for adequate social distancing among students and between students and teachers. More learning spaces would need to be opened up, created or built; but there aren't enough teachers to staff these additional classrooms. And even logistics like bathroom and lunchroom usage will be complicated for most schools. Skeptics agree that distance learning is not optimal; but it may be the best option we have.
Across the country, some school systems already have decreed that they will begin the school year with a distance learning model. Others are planning a blend of on-site and distance learning, in an effort to deliver the benefits of classroom learning while minimizing physical presence. In Illinois, no statewide guidance has been provided for reopening; each school district and private-school entity is working on contingency plans and watching in dismay as the number of infections statewide has started to creep upward again.
One of my children is a teacher in the Chicago Archdiocese's Catholic school system. At this point, the Archdiocesan schools are planning to resume full-time classroom learning. My child's school's enrollment is sufficiently small that social distancing within the classroom should be possible. The children will be expected to wear masks throughout the day. Many typical classroom and school day procedures will need to be rethought, from reading circles to playground rules.
Some parents at this school apparently are nervous about sending their children back to a classroom. This is a problem for Catholic schools because the schools rely on tuition payments to stay afloat financially; if enough families withdraw from a school, the school may no longer be financially viable. The archdiocese is planning to offer distance learning for children of these parents. What tuition these parents would pay, isn't yet clear to me.
I'm sympathetic to the wish to return to the classroom, but on the whole, I'm with those who think it's better to stay away from the classroom while the pandemic is raging. Yes, the educational outcomes may not be as good. But these are not normal times. Frankly, it's way past time for the country to face up to this, and steel itself to show the solidarity and make the sacrifices necessary to get the best of the virus. We will muddle through without our children gathering in school buildings for a while. Grandparents, aunts and uncles may need to oversee the at-home education of some children so the parents can work. Everyone, including employers, will need to be flexible to accommodate the difficult balancing acts we'll be asking of families of young children. But this is all necessary if we're going to defeat the coronavirus.
"...But these are not normal times. Frankly, it's way past time for the country to face up to this, and steel itself to show the solidarity and make the sacrifices necessary to get the best of the virus."
ReplyDeleteJim, I agree with you. There's no way we can go back to "normal" yet with schools.
I see that some of the Nebraska schools have a mixed plan. The public school system here is going with a 2-3 day schedule of on-site learning, similar to what the Omaha schools are doing. And the Omaha system is allowing families to opt for online classes only if they feel it isn't safe yet to send their kids to school. The stipulation is that they have to make their decision for the semester, no on-again, off-again. I think they're hoping that the number who opt for online only will counterbalance the families who feel that they have to have 5 day in order to work.
The Catholic and Protestant schools in our town are going for 5 day classes. The enrollments are small enough that they feel they can distance properly.
I have read about some families (in other locations) where the schools aren't opening for on-site, who are trying to do learning pods of 10 or so kids, and hiring a tutor. Reminds me of the 19th century British novels where wealthy families had a governess. Think Jane Eyre and Agnes Grey. Of course the ones who can't afford to do that are SOL.
When I was growing up, the sense of cultural history I learned was roughly as follows (YMMV - this is what I was taught by my conservative parents and the pretty-conservative Catholic school I attended):
ReplyDelete* During the Depression and then WWII, the country was united by common purpose and many common values. Naturally, this view overlooks many problems and issues (starting with Jim Crow) but the view insisted that there were important bonds of unity and outlook. Some examples of American virtues would have included hard work, patriotism, faith in democracy, honoring the nuclear family, and a certain optimism that the United States was a place of opportunity where people could improve their lives.
* Culturally, the 1960s and '70s were sort of a Big Bang, in which whatever it was that previously had bonded groups of Americans together was dissolved, and fissures started to appear in the cultural edifice.
Since that era, and despite nostalgia-laced preservation attempts by the conservative movement, the celestial American bodies have continued to drift farther apart. By the turn of the millenium, it had occurred to me that the single most powerful bond which united American culture was concern for children. This was the principle which has animated our common revulsion to the Catholic sex-abuse scandals.
Now, our ideological and political divisions have become sufficiently toxic that not even concern for children is enough to keep us rooted in a common purpose. Some people are willing to (literally!) sacrifice a certain number of children's lives in order to win the next election, by inserting a wedge between teachers and parents.
Can we stop and ponder that for a moment? "Some children will die, but that's okay." If that is what it means to be a contemporary American, then I've reached the point in my dotage where I'm making my peace with living in the past.
It is cultural, to some extent, but it's also loss of the can-do spirit. From the start of the pandemic, The Don insisted it would be no worse than the people who die during flu season. Those were the first expendables. Then we had doctors and nurses working around the clock and being told to buy masks and wash them in their spare time. Those were the second expendables. The young kids, most (sic) of whom will survive are partial expendable; and the older kids, who do pass it on and who are not able to resist the virus, will be expended, too. We just don't know enough about the kids' reactions to confidently say we are not leaving them as a military Forlorn Hope.
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DeleteImo, the glue that holds America together is a belief in life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness--all of which is predicated on having money. We fought a Revolution to keep more of it. We held on to slavery to make more of it. We killed union organizers to prevent distribution of it.
DeleteAmerica's common cultural core is "let me make as much money as I can unless you can prove it's harming someone else."
That isn't to say that there aren't many good Americans who haven't espoused and fought for the common good and the protection of the defenseless. But I don't see care for others at the expense of an imploding economy as an American trait.
Dead kids? What a tragedy for their parents. Elderly dying in nursing homes? Gosh, we need to be more careful, but maybe it's a blessing for some of them. High death rates among infected health care workers? Let's give some companies some contracts for PPE; it's an ill wind that blows nobody good.
Americans see these deaths as individual misfortunes that befall individual families. Sad in the abstract, but nothing to do with them, maybe even the fault of the families themselves. They have no sense that dead kids, old people, or health care workers are national tragedies that diminish us all collectively.
Apropos of Jim's.comment about the Good Old Days, see George Will's column in the WaPo about 1942, a year to rival 2020:
Delete--The saccharine myth that “everything changed” in a nation united by the sense of “all being in this together” was belied by lynchings and violent killings, such as that in Sikeston, Mo., of an African American accused of assaulting a white woman. After he was tied by his feet to a truck and dragged to his death, the local newspaper said this would “protect the wives of soldier boys.” When some black soldiers in Oklahoma City were forced to ride on segregated trains for 24 hours without food while white soldiers were fed, an indignant FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover investigated the African American who reported this. In the epicenter of the Arsenal of Democracy, a.k.a. Detroit, rioting, gun-toting whites persuaded the city to rethink integration of public housing.
In California, Gen. John “A Jap is a Jap” DeWitt said of the 112,000 Japanese Americans on the West Coast, “There are indications these are organized and ready for concerted operation.” The indications were the absence of indications. This, DeWitt said, indicated secret plotting, so these Americans were sent to concentration camps. Including Fred Korematsu, who had tried to enlist. His challenge to internment reached the Supreme Court, where he lost. In 2018, the court repudiated this decision.--
Boy, the way Glenn Miller played ...
Delete(Pretty sharp little ditty.)
Well, if we are down to slinging song lyrics:
DeleteLife can be bright in America
If you're all white in America.
The dance in Tallahassee has developed a few new moves, none of them good. The upshot at the moment is that the band will play and all who are not paralyzed by fear will send their little bullets off to infect their teachers. Gov. Roadrunner has come up with two moves for the fearful:
ReplyDelete1. It Has Been Decreed that parents who want to keep their bullets home may do so and must be accommodated. That means the reopened schools must maintain distance learning.
2. It Has Been Decreed that Special Arrangements must be made for at-risk children whose fearless parents send them to school. What such arrangements will look like has not been specified.
3. Oblivious to the dance going on in Tallahassee, local school districts are announcing their plans. In the larger counties, mostly, the schools will open with distance learning-only next month. The state superintendent of education seemed to say county districts may NOT ignore his mandate that everyone be open with physical kids. There seems to be some air between him and the governor.
None of this solves any problems for teachers. Nor for parents who need to go to work but really don't want their kids spending their days in warm baths of COVID. Nor for parents who are going to suck it up and try to do distance learning as second-class citizens in a Third World educational system. If I were a parent in either class, I'd vote for Trump and get rid of these government people who can't walk or chew gum.
No idea what the local yokels running the district will do here. If the Catholic school opens and the public does not, Catholic school will be turning away people who need a place to put their kids. They'll make $$ if they're the only game in town, especially if they charge that out-of-parish rate.
ReplyDeleteThe rich will get through it with private tutors as Katherine mentioned. The children of the poor will fall behind or go to schools where they will be at increased exposure risk. The poor always have it rough. Unless the poor band together and set up a volunteer system of "pods." Parent-teacher groups might help with this.
Most districts have been providing free and reduced meals to kids all along. A friend's husband is a bus driver who has been delivering to the kids on his route.
The kids who will really suffer are the special needs kids like mine was. They will backslide in education, socialization, and confidence.
My grade school was a four room school where there were two grades in each room, i.e. 1-2, 3-4, 5-6, 7-8 but only one teacher per room. There were about twenty students in my year without the same numbers in the years before and after.
ReplyDeleteWhile the one class, e.g. 7th grade was reciting the other class, e.g. 8th grade on the other side of the room was studying. If you were distracted from your study it was mainly be either anticipating what you would be doing next year or reviewing last year’s work.
I think it was an excellent system which many of us benefitted from. For example in the 7th -9th grade room there was a classical library in English. I was fascinated by Caesar’s Gallic Wars and Thucydides Peloponnesian Wars.
Could we adapt this model to provide half instruction at home by way of videos of classroom instruction, while having half instruction with half the students at school locations on half the days?
Jack, that's what grade school was like when I was a kid, too. What you suggest is worth a try.
DeleteMy mom went to a one-room country school, K-8. There were about a dozen kids total. She said the teacher had what was called a "two year certificate" , that is, not a baccalaureate degree, but two years at a state teacher's college. That almost sounds like a "learning pod" arrangement. Except it was a public school, and it was free.
That was also my grade school experience, two classes, one teacher, same room. In a Catholic school. Here is what is different now: Not one of the parents then would have consulted a lawyer is little Anthony or little Patricia had a bad day. Said parents would have had to suck it up or get out, and all of them knew it.
DeleteJust think of the rights our parents gave up. If asked, they would have given up the right to be maskholes, as well. That's probably why we turned out the way we did.
I think NYC was proposing a half live/half distance model, no?
DeleteMy Gramma taught in a one-room school. The beauty of that set-up was that a kid who was a good reader was immediately "graduated" to the next grade's lessons. Kids who were slow at math could repeat that but move ahead with other subjects. Also, older kids who were done with their work could tutor others.
In my elementary school, we had a one "blended" first and second grade class. I learned later that it was basically for at-risk second-graders who needed more review as they learned new material. The hope was that they would be caught up and could go on to third grade by year's end.
We also had a third grade class for the "bad boys" taught by Mrs. Mack who loved to pull hair. You knew who'd been assigned Mrs. Mack on Day One because they all had their heads shaved.
Weirdly, the boys who didn't grow up to be addicts or felons remembered her fondly.
Really interesting stuff. Having multiple grades in the same room - I had never heard of that before, beyond Little House on the Prairie.
DeleteWhen I started first grade, I think that would have been in 1966, enrollment in the school was so high that first grade (the lowest grade; Catholic schools in that town didn't offer kindergarten in those days) were moved into two temporary classrooms, which essentially were trailers sitting in a parking lot. But there were so many first graders enrolled that each of the trailers had a morning section and then a separate afternoon section. So I went to school in the morning, came home for lunch and then stayed home for the afternoon. I had lots of younger siblings at home so I'm sure I simply hung out with them.
I don't know how that half-day arrangement fulfilled the state hours-of-instruction requirements, but maybe Catholic schools weren't too concerned about compliance in those days. And I don't know whether the idea of telling parents, "Sorry, the school is full, you'll have to find another school" was something that a Catholic school would have done; the spirit of "We're different and better, and our children must be immersed in this" still burned in a lot of adult breasts in those days.
Jim, they were still doing half-day kindergarten when my kids were little. It was felt that full days were too long for 5 year olds. The afternoon class had their little mats to "nap" on mid-afternoon. I think that was mainly for the teacher's benefit!
DeleteI wonder if the full-day kindergarten nowadays is about half a day of learning, and half a day of day-care. Little kids' attention spans haven't changed in a generation, just because their parents' schedules have.
The Catholic school when I was a kid didn't have kindergarten, either. But the state required it, so that meant kids had to go to public school for a year, then transfer over. I think you are right that there wasn't any enrollment cap then, they just moved some more desks into the room and made them closer together. 40-plus kids in a classroom, if there was measles going around, the whole bunch was going to get it.
Katherine, I did the same as you: went to a public school for kindergarten, then switched over to the Catholic school starting in first grade. We had the mats, too. I could never understand why we needed a rest period: I was raring to go :-). There were a couple of kids who would fall asleep on them from time to time, though.
DeleteOur local elementary school district still does half-day kindergarten. Other districts in the area have moved to full-day. The Catholic schools around here also offer half-day kindergarten now. So a few of the kindergarteners go to Catholic kindergarten in the morning, walk over to the nearby bus stop, get on the school bus which is making the noon-time rounds for the public school's afternoon kindergarten section, and then attend public school kindergarten (for free, of course) during the afternoons. Presto - instant, free day care!
I attended grammar school in the Philadelphia Archdiocese in the fifties, the temporal and geographical peak of the Church Triumphant. One grade per class per sister, kids per class. Eventually, they funneled into the Catholic high schools. My Msgr. Bonner graduating class had 600. Graduation was in the Phila. Convention Center. Cardinal Dougherty in NE Philadelphia was even larger. That school was the China of Philly Catholic high schools.
ReplyDeleteFifty kids per class
DeleteStanley - my dad, who is older than you (in his 80s now) reported similar class sizes in his Catholic grammar school in Michigan. And the religious sisters often weren't very old, and often weren't very qualified. Big on discipline, though.
DeleteHis school (which was also my first school; he and I grew up in the same house, a generation apart) was grades 1-12, so his high school graduating class size was something like 58.
Jim, I think the sisters bacj then did a pretty good job. When I got into the workforce, I noticed the Catholic school products (through college) among the engineers were better writers and seemed a bit "broader". Though weaker in science and math through high school, the final result was more than a technical functionary.
DeleteThere were some families here who were homeschooling prior to the pandemic. The rules in this state are that they have to pass the GED tests in order to get a high school diploma if they homeschooled all the way through. My husband's last job before he retired for good was teaching for GED. His degree was in mathematics and physics. He said the homeschooled kids did fairly well in most areas, except that nearly always they were weak in math.
ReplyDeleteCatholic schools weren't that great in math. I wish I'd had some calculus before I hit college. At least, they gave a short summer course in limits which helped when I took intro calc in my college freshman year.
DeleteI would imagine that if you and your husband had homeschooled your kids, their math would be fine. If I had had kids, I probably would have found their regular schooling inadequate and would have done some home schooling.
The obvious problem with home schooling is socialization. How are the kids to find out what they gotta wear and whose music they should listen to and who's to die for at the movies without a peer group? Florida has solved the problem buy decreeing home-schooled kids may play on the teams and participate in the other extra-curricular activities of the public school. You can imagine how that goes -- unless the football coach really, really wants the kid, in which case there is no discrimination.
DeleteI can see lots of good reasons for homeschooling. Such as right now keeping them from getting a highly contagious, dangerous disease. But I also see the drawbacks. I'm quite sure that I had a better relationship with my mom than I would have if she had homeschooled me. It would be tough to be both a parent and a teacher. And I think there would be a tendency with homeschooling or "unschooling" to let the kid concentrate on the things he or she liked at the expense of those she considered tedious or boring. One thing the nuns in Catholic school got across to me is that it doesn't make any difference if you like a subject or not, you are going to put forth your best effort anyway. You put JMJ at the top of your paper and suck it up.
DeleteI did very poorly in some subjects in grade school, anything that required rote memory. I got C's in Arithmetic. Did very poorly in memorizing my addition, subtraction and multiplication tables. I have always struggled with languages.
DeleteWhen I went to high school I had strait A's in algebra, geometry, trigonometry, and calculus. I got a 100% on all the exams in geometry except for one where I got 98%. The teacher refused to round that up to 100 for the report card.
I think we all have very diversified brains that are not easy captured by most tests. I was fortunate to have which I called ETS test taking ability. After all those 99+ percentile scores came rolling in in high school and college, national merit finalist and all that, I was glad to have teachers and everyone smiling with approval and allowing me more independence.
But in the back of my mind I decided I just had ETS test taking ability. I believed that until I took the ETS Graduate School exam in French. I had had five years of French by that time most with B and C grades. I got a 41 percentile. Fortunately 40th percentile certified one as having completed the language requirement. Fortunately one could substitute computer skills for a second language.
I actually hated school most of my life, even graduate school except for doing research and independent study. If I had had children I would have been very tempted to home school them especially if they had the intellectual curiosity and independence that I have.
It's funny, but I never did like math much, except for geometry. I got acceptable grades in it, mainly Bs, because if I didn't, I knew I was going to hear about it from my parents. Besides, I was unwilling to let my brother outshine me (he did anyway). But mathematics ended up being a tool that I used every single day of my job for 23 years.
DeleteMath was my downfall - my weakest subject. My inability to get beyond calculus is the reason I didn't pursue graduate studies in economics. I did have one great math teacher in high school, a religious sister. She left teaching after my sophomore year; decided she was being called to get into hospice ministry. She really had a vocation for teaching math.
DeleteI am told homeschoolers network with one another, the families hang out with each other, and that provides a level of socialization for the children. Nevertheless, I can't shake the impression that to choose homeschooling for religious or ideological reasons is to choose to be *apart* from the larger society - and that troubles me. School is the formative civic institution for most of us, and choosing to withhold one's children from it, strikes me as almost a dereliction of citizenship.
Of course, Catholic schooling, which I attended for most (but not all) of my school days, is sort of a sub-culture apart. So I'm not sure I'm being entirely consistent! But being part of a vast, deep sub-culture is not quite the same thing as staying within the confines of the family.
On the one hand, we'd like to spare our kids the mean girls and boys of middle school. On the other hand, it's a lot easier to learn how to deal with them then than to encounter them for the first time as an adult at work.
DeleteI went to public grade school and high school, but then to a Catholic College (Saint John's Collegeville, Minn. during Vatican II). Plus a Jesuit novitiate in between.
DeleteJust like I hated school, I also hated religious education. If I had been exposed to Catholic grade school and high school I might have rebelled against what was presented as Catholicism.
However since I discovered the liturgy and Divine Office, and began to use Saint Vincent's library during high school I got interested in all sorts of things religious. I was supported in this by a Catholic math teacher in my public high school who became a life long intellectual friend. He lent me Merton's Seeds of Contemplation which profoundly influenced my life.
We need to assist young people in discovering their talents and interests not burden them with our interests or societies interests. One of the greatest forms of idolatry is trying to make other people into our image and likeness.
I think religious education is a crap shoot. The Boy loved it at Catholic school where it was.woven into the curriculum, but CCD was just abysmal. We tried to supplement by celebrating lots of saints' days at home, but it didn't take. Lateley, he has been schooling is on what he is reading about Church history, so maybe he is more interested again ...
DeleteI agree that parents should try to figure out what the kids are good at/interested in and find ways to give them "outlets." I loathe jazz, and attending concerts and feigning interest in that for six years was harder than toilet training or midnight feedings.
Jean,
DeleteGone
Love is never gone
As we travel on
Love's what we'll remember
...
Won't forget, can't regret
What I did for love
No one will ever accuse me of having an excess of maternal love. One does one's duty when faced with an unplanned late-life, high-risk pregnancy and steps up to one's duty to raise the child so as not to be a trial to himself and others.
DeleteHardly the type of thing people write songs about.
Or perhaps that's your point.
Jean, No, somebody did write songs about that type of people. Jerry Herman (You and Jim started this):
DeleteI never really found the boy
Before I lost him
Were the years a little fast?
Was his world a little free?
Was there too much of a crowd
All too lush and loud
And not enough of me?
M'okay, but I don't recall quoting pop song lyrics at Jim. If you and Jerry Herman are trying to send me a message, I'm not getting it, and it's kind of creeping me out. Let's just move on, eh?
Delete