The following is a satirical piece by John Merrow about the great “learning loss” panic.
As I’ve said before, we just inadvertently experienced the Education revolution because of the pandemic. Over 50 million families in the United States and perhaps 2 billion around the world now know that they have educational choices, that they are not necessarily stuck with the local school to which they were assigned.
That means that most students and families are no longer a captive audience. They can choose to go to the local school–or not.
This seems to have given rise to a massive campaign to convince everyone that the move to various forms of homeschooling, virtual learning and other innovative approaches has led to tremendous “learning loss.” This seems to me an attempt to get their previous captive audience back. But it doesn’t seem to be working. A startling number of families are choosing not to send their children back to their previous situation.
Of course many of these virtual attempts by unprepared teachers were indeed boring and led to learning loss, because many teachers simply tried to teach the way they had in the in-person school, a talking head pushing a rigid, set curriculum. This was minus the thing that was most important to many students: peer interaction. Instead of taking advantage of the networking we have all discovered in Zoom meetings, many teachers didn’t have that as an option at all! No wonder many students hated it. During the pandemic, almost every student I’ve asked has said the only thing they missed about not going to school was the other students.
And when the representatives of the system pushed “learning loss,” they apparently have net considered or tested for the increase in creativity, responsibility, innovation, and entrepreneurism that the extra time and freedom has engendered in many students. I’ve done many consultations with parents who have been stunned but t he improvements they seen in their students in these areas. In one case, for example, a father who was not at all interested in homeschooling was amazed when he daughter said one day they she wanted to start working with the horses at the farm next door. Since then she got up every morning at dawn to work with the horses and has also be researching them on the Internet.
Let us know what you think about the idea of learning loss and we might put it in a future e newsletter. HERE’s a link to this essay if you’d like to send it to someone.
With all that in mind, HERE’s the link to John Merrow’s satirical piece.
