Rewarding Selfishness and Punishing Children in a Pandemic; What Will We Regret?

COMMENTARY

I consider myself forewarned.

Nearly a year ago, a trusted source predicted that COVID-19 would have lasting repercussions on the world’s children. An educator, he spoke about how the impact would be felt not only on attendance but what that would mean, outlining dire ramifications on their learning losses, gaps in knowledge, their emotional growth, and overall development.

The ramifications, he cautioned, could be global in scope if the pandemic lingered, and unless recognized and addressed, difficult to reverse.

At the time I was taken by the sureness of his proclamations. I didn’t doubt him. I just didn’t want to believe.

The conversation is on constant recall lately.

It plays in the back of my mind during the daily reports of school closings in districts nationwide. School systems are finding themselves unable to function with so many teachers and other staff sick with COVID. Substitute teachers are a highly sought after commodity, so much so that the state of Kansas lowered the threshold for such duty. For now, anyone with a diploma and who passes the background check, can fill in.

Janitors are stepping up to man the cafeteria line. Principals are driving bus routes. And still, schools are shutting down for partial or whole weeks.

There just aren’t enough healthy staff to keep the schools open. And in some states, like Kansas, state legislatures limited the number of hours allowed for remote learning mostly because they want children in schools. Their meddling votes are now fueling school closures.

Politicians have limited the flexibility of schools districts.

At the time of these laws it seems many had the attitude that the vaccine would save us. Few, outside of the science and medical community, were talking about ever-emerging variants, much less these long term impacts.

If you are a parent, trying to manage a lack of day care with your child now unable to attend a shuttered school, or frustrated by the disconnectedness of remote learning, guess what? You are but a nugget in this dysfunctional global implosion of education.

Numbers to your household disruption are starting to be calculated.

Globally, the estimated learning loss because of educational interruptions was placed at $17 trillion dollars in lifetime earnings for this generation, in the latest calculation released in December. But that numerical guesstimate by the United Nations and the World Bank is just potential lost earnings.

The previous estimate from 2020 pegged the losses at $10 trillion dollars. Understand that this is a cumulative problem as the pandemic continues.

Expect for these sort of deep dive assessments to continue. It’s necessary, perhaps even crucial, to get people’s mindsets to shift.

Perhaps you think that Omicron, the latest variant, will pass and everything will revert and certainly, for some children, the learning losses won’t be dire. Children will eventually be back in school. There’s already much evidence that the peak has passed in the U.S. and elsewhere.

But what have we already lost? More than 167,000 children in the U.S. have lost a primary caretaker to COVID-19. Those are life altering deaths for those children.

It’s hard to imagine because it didn’t happen this way, but what if the children had truly been the focus of getting COVID-19 under control the whole time?

Restrictive limits in hours allowed for remote study never would have been considered. Educators know that in-person learning is preferable for most. But they also wanted children to be safe from the virus.

Nor would the mind-numbingly selfish refusal to wear masks in public spaces be given credence simply because someone didn’t want to and thought themselves invincible against COVID.

Early on, there were parents who didn’t want to accept the threat of the virus and its impact on extracurricular sports for their child. They pounded on podiums at school board meetings, adamant that their kid just couldn’t possibly be expected to miss a varsity game or match. We would have never seen these episodes.

And politicians who saw the pandemic as a career steppingstone, an opportunity to goad on the vaccine hesitant, to question medical professionals and scientists would never have been given platforms.

So much pompous rhetoric surrounds children in America. They are, depending on the need of the speaker, touted as precious and fragile. Children hold our hopes for the future.

And yet, we have not served them well during the pandemic.

The point is simple: Which side of this debate are you on? And will your views today hold up to scrutiny in the coming years?

We need a reset to public health, especially in light of how our children and their education have been impacted. We’ve already caused enough harm.

(Readers can reach Mary Sanchez at [email protected] and follow her on Twitter @msanchezcolumn.)

©2022 Mary Sanchez. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.