An interesting angle on the Coronavirus and education is the impact that missing so much school has on our children and their future educational outcomes. In New Zealand, there have been mixed responses from teachers, parents and schools regarding how important learning is during the lockdown, but at least we have been able to mitigate the potential damage so far with a providentially placed term 1 holiday.
In the States, the timing of this outbreak could hardly be worse, coming as it does before their long summer break. Every teacher who has taught children for consecutive years knows how much children can lose over the holidays, and some claim it is two to three months of learning. But in the US, this summer break has effectively doubled due to lockdown. Some reports suggest that students could lose an entire academic year of progress.
Joy Pullmann, a correspondent for The Federalist points out the injustice of this.
Our nation’s leaders are demanding that American children pay for this crisis through debt-financed spending, while depriving them of the education they need to make that even remotely possible. Our response to coronavirus is upping our society’s selfish demands that mostly the young pay — mentally, financially, socially, psychologically — for tabs the adults run up. This is not just impractical but immoral. Effectively enslaving voiceless citizens is not a just society’s response to a crisis.
Pullmann makes a good point that is worth considering. Here in New Zealand, we are taking on huge debt as a result of locking down our economy. Will our children bear the brunt of this in both future taxes as well as lower future incomes as a result of lower educational outcomes? Let’s hope not. It’s important that parents, teachers and schools work to ensure that these weeks are not an educational wasteland, but a time of fruitful, albeit unusual learning.
If you’re a parent, and you are worried about what your school is providing during the lockdown, there are plenty of useful sites and Youtube channels you can look into. Take a look at this NZ homeschooling blog, which has a great resource page. If your child is doing high school Mathematics, I highly recommend looking at Eddie Woo’s Youtube channel. He is the best Maths teacher I’ve seen. If you have a child studying Cambridge IGCSE or AS and A level Mathematics, I have set up my own Youtube channel to help support my Cambridge students during the lockdown. And while just doing worksheets isn’t always ideal, Worksheet Works is a fabulous resource which contains a tonne of Mathematics and English language resources which can be fine-tuned to your child’s needs. It also has some really fun puzzles and brain-teasers.