I offer my deep respect to all the superintendents of education, staff and school boards for everything you do for our children. I was a teacher previously and am now a grandmother of five and mother of two. Frankly, we all know we cannot keep children safe in schools until we have a proven vaccine. We cannot ask you to decide that a certain number of people are just going to die, or that the value of each individual life is no longer sacrosanct. We should not accept this rationale as our community standard or a path forward.
Children do not fall off cliffs if they take a year or two away from academic, in-person studies. It isn't ideal, perhaps, but children do this all the time — while they are in class — and nobody punishes them with a potential death sentence. Isolated farmers' children survived learning "reading and arithmetic" at home for centuries and humanity still managed to progress. In fact, every culture has traditional methods of family, religious and community education and societies progress whether or not everyone has access to in-person public schools.
Most parents are naturally endowed with teaching skills. With U.S. literacy rates somewhere between 77 percent to 89 percent — according to which study you read — most kids will be fine. There are families who will need a different kind of help and meaningful support, just like they do now. Children are resilient, naturally curious, creative and — given freedom and structure — will follow their passions and continue to learn at home. We continually under-estimate them, as foolishly as we under-estimate ourselves.
Accustomed to teaching the answers to the test, we have forgotten the most important aspect of teaching is to stimulate each child's natural curiosity to create a lifelong learner. Every long distance grandparent in this country knows how to expose and excite a grandchild to the riches of guided but independent self-learning. Yes, it is a lot more difficult when you don't have a captive audience — but must instead captivate — yet that is today’s educator’s challenge. Some teachers may also need more support, but I have every confidence they will flourish and thrive given the right tools.
A decent society cannot normalize a defeatist attitude that "a certain percentage of deaths from COVID-19 is inevitable, so why take the hard road?"
We know how to stop this pandemic. Putting children into school now is foolhardy and perhaps even malevolent. Let's be honest. Doing the right thing has a big cost, but that cost will never be as long-lasting or horrific as doing the wrong thing and guaranteeing unnecessary, preventable deaths. A child who survives to adulthood is going to contribute much more to society than that extra help will cost us in the short term. This is about adjusting our perceptions of a reasonable return on investment timeline and not about adjusting our principles and values. A compassionate, loving and inclusive society protects our kids and our community. Keep all the kids home this fall.
