Can schools and vaccines save the republic?

The coronavirus pandemic has revealed to the country the essential role that schools play in our lives.  Many people were not prepared to deal with the reactions of their children to mitigation practices and school closures.  During the past year of pandemic,  the most insidious effect has been an increase in the suicide rate among children.

The pandemic has caused significant psychosocial sufferings, leading to the development or exacerbation of fear, distress, anxiety, depression, and other psychiatric disorders, including extreme suicidal thoughts among school children.

In many families, both parents work.  School and after-school daycare are an essential part of the daily family scedule.  When schools were closed or adopted modified scheduling, most families had to try to find solutions for what to do with their children during the day.  Some parents lost their jobs and stayed home with their kids, some had to arrange to work at home, and others had to find accommodations for their children that did not conflict with the measures for avoiding exposure to Covid-19.  On top of that, the parents had to confront the issues of learning patterns of their children.  What schools deal with routinely are beyond the experience and knowledge of most parents.  The reopening of schools became a major concern in dealing with the pandemic,

The internet and distance learning seemed to offer a way to compensate for the loss of direct teacher-to-student instruction time.  Serious shortcomings in computer-delivered instruction, where it was available, became quickly evident.  Some kids did not respond well and others rebelled.

That rebellion and confusion is something I have had experience with.  In the early 1960s, programmed learning was all the rage in education circles.  Introduced by behavioral psychologists, it was promoted as a help, sometimes a replacement, for teacher-centered instruction.  At the time, I was a technical writer for a research and development company which had designed a machine that could run the teaching programs.  The company and some professors obtained and wrote some programs and placed the teaching machines in schools to promote their adoption into school curricula.  

Part of my job was to collect data on the trials and assist in producing a study on the use of teaching machines.  Initially placements were in laboratory schools run by universities. As those schools have professors kids in attendance, they weren't a good place for assessing how teaching machines would work in the classroom.  Professors' kids will exert themselves when they realize that some professor's work product is being tested in their classes.  The teaching machines seemed to offer some promise in the lab schools.

When the machines were placed in regular public classrooms, they did not produce an encouraging result.  After the initial curiosity about the machines wore off, student interest was almost impossible to maintain.  Many students would operate the machines as fast as they could, skipping over the learning programs they contained.  This would jam the machines and result in distractions for the teachers and the other students.  Teaching machines intensified the boredom level among students, and our study concluded that they were more a hindrance than a help for learning.  We found that they created bad attitudes toward the material they were supposed to present.

That is a factor that parents were confronted with as they tried to engage their children in distance learning.  Educators thought that the interest kids show toward computer games could be channeled for educational purposes.   Computer games involve the destroying of adversaries, which is done by pushing buttons on a controller.  Instruction involves the acquisition of information by minds that can process it.  Computers can be  effective in educating children, but not in the gaming mode.  Games are a diversion away from the kind of concentration required for learning.  Teachers have found that the successful use of computers requires intensified control over those factors that produce real learning.  Young students need to have help to stay focused on the subject matter, and help is easier to provide in an organized classroom.  That is a point that frustrated some parents when their children had to resort to distance learning because of the pandemic.  

The pandemic has revealed how schools are integrated into family life.  Where schools were closed or attendance patterns were significantly changed, family life was disrupted.  People were forced to recognize that schools contribute a service, not only in educating children but in making it possible for adults to fully engage in making livings and making homes.  Courses in the foundation of American education stress how people who founded the republic understood the vital role education plays in establishing and maintaining the level of freedom, equality, and justice to which it aspires.  The school system which developed out of those aspirations became the standard for the world.  When nations reorganized themselves after World War II, the modeled their schools on the U.S. public education system.  The basic idea put forward was to give everybody, regardless of race, ethnicity, gender, or religion a chance to fully participate in national life.

Our schools struggle at times to meet that mandate.  There are many people who have endured discrimination in school.  And there are those for whom school is not a good place.  But for the most part, our schools have provided opportunity to their students have developed community trust in partnership with families,

Restoring schools to be fully functioning is generally acknowledged as an imperative.   The nation can't function without them. The psychosocial problems that closings caused in children show what a critical factor they are in American life. The quick development of vaccines has made it possible to fully open by fall.  However, the more astute schools will change the way they do some things in recognition of the pandemic in order to prevent and be prepared for pandemics to come.  

A poll has shown that 42 percent of Republicans are shunning the vaccines.  They deny the pandemic.  That poses a threat to restoring schools to full educational operation.  People who refuse to wear masks and get vaccinated can impede the business of learning.  They want to extend the opportunity of an agonizing death by coronavirus more than provide the opportunity of a good life through the acquisition of an education.

The pandemic has revealed a large segment of people that harbors malice toward their fellow citizens.  Once again, America finds a malevolent force that wants a more discriminatory and hateful country.

South Dakota is a test case.  In a study of how states perform in equality,  South Dakota comes in dead last.  That will motivate many people to get vaccinated, get educated, and get out.