The New World Order -- For Adults And Kids
People are discovering that they don't need to get dressed every day and drive to an office in heavy traffic to do their job.
Now, I love people, and I helped a girl get her too-big package into a mailbox the other day -- both because I'm used to doing that myself (saves trip to post office) and I wanted to be helpful and because I'll do anything to have conversations with strangers around me once again.
But all those offices and all those commutes? We look at them differently now.
The same goes for the stranglehold often lackluster public schools and public school teachers held over kids' education.
At Reason, J.D. Tucille writes that public schools are losing their "captive audience":
Insisting that "the push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny," the Chicago Teachers Union is fighting plans to return children to the city's public school classrooms. Not only is the union seeking an injunction to keep kids at home, but it says "all options are going to be on the table"--an implied threat of a strike in an already chaotic year--if it's not happy with the school board's decision.Amidst a multitude of such battles across the country, it's no wonder that families weary of being held hostage to other people's decisions are abandoning government schools to enroll their kids in private institutions or to teach them at home. That shift is likely to permanently transform education in the United States in a way that lets children experience diverse approaches and viewpoints.
...With similar battles playing out around the country, many families are heading for the exits. The evidence shows that more children than before the pandemic are learning their lessons from options chosen by their parents and free of the whims of school boards and unions. Public school enrollment is down in California, Colorado, Massachusetts, Maine, Minneapolis, Mississippi, and elsewhere.
..."More families are choosing to home-school or send their children to private schools," notes the Lewiston Sun Journal in Maine.
Homeschooling, in particular, is booming. Once regarded as a fringe choice for hippies and religious families, various approaches to DIY education pushed into the mainstream in recent decades and reached critical mass this year. An estimated 3.3 percent of children were homeschooled in 2016, up from 1.7 percent in 1999, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. That share roughly tripled this year to nine percent, in an Education Week survey. Gallup agrees, finding that 10 percent of children are now being homeschooled.
"Home schooling will become more mainstream and socially acceptable, now that so many people are getting experience with schooling their own children from home--whether it's through traditional home schooling or overseeing their children's remote schooling," Christopher Lubienski, a professor of education policy at Indiana University, told Education Week. He predicts that some families will return to public schools after the pandemic passes, but the ranks of homeschoolers will permanently increase.
School funding needs to follow students rather than schools. Suddenly, if public schools are doing a shoddy job, there's recourse.
Charter schools are one way to go. But even parents without a lot of money can set up learning pods with a teacher -- like my super-smart friend who taught at Crossroads (chi-chi LA private school) but was then hired by a couple of wealthy families to privately school two or three children together.
This is suicide for the unions. But more power to them I guess.
You can go to Pew or other places and you'll get roughly the same statistics.
~25% of kids in the US are in single parent homes. That parent has to work to put food on the table and keep a roof over everyone's head. If the kids don't go to school mom can't go to work. Zoom class doesn't cut it.
~50% of kids live in a dual income home. The adults may not be married but at least there are two of them and they both have jobs. Once again there is no one available to stay home and watch the kids do Zoom meetings all day.
So only 25% can make public school remote learning work. But even here there are problems. These families are mostly wealthier and have higher education levels with the attached higher education expectations. They can afford private schools and pods and all kinds of alternatives the other 75% of families cannot.
So only around 12% of kids can work with what the Chicago Teachers Union wants. At that point you may as well just shut down the schools.
Ben at December 20, 2020 10:41 PM
If we'd stayed in the States I would have seriously considered homeschooling as an option, especially given all the places we considered living thriving home schooling communities. All the kids I know who homeschooled (more hippies than fundies) turned out great. Polite, kind, well-read, intelligent...
A friend of mine who had learning disabilites was homeschooled and her experience just seemed so awesome. To learn history they'd do things like volunteer at houses in Concord and wear period costume and entertain tourists in character at the living history places. They were always testing the waters for pollution and the like, and they'd take classes at university extensions and at community college. Seemed awesome.
NicoleK at December 20, 2020 11:06 PM
Ben's point about school as a babysitter kinda negates the whole "Opening the schools is misogynist" argument... I've been seeing the opposite, tons and tons of articles online about how the pandemic is hurting working women and so many are now opting out because of the school situation.
NicoleK at December 21, 2020 4:11 AM
"Insisting that "the push to reopen schools is rooted in sexism, racism and misogyny""...today's 'progressives' seem to have a form of Tourette's Symdrome, in which strings of standardized insults rattle out irrespective of any relevant connection or context.
David Foster at December 21, 2020 5:51 AM
The public school system restricts the progress of any class to the slowest students in that class, by default. Students who qualify for advanced placement escape the slower general population classes, bu the students who don't qualify for or want to pursue advanced placement are stuck with classes that are too slow for them.
Homeschooling and modular teaching allow each student to learn at his or her own pace. Slower students can rehash a needed lesson without holding back the rest of the class. Students can receive remedial help in subjects in which they struggle. These types of learning delivery systems essentially customize education for each student in a way that traditional single-teacher classroom environments cannot.
Ironically, teachers unions have been the biggest hinderance to school systems adopting these types of programs due to concerns about modular systems reducing the number of teachers needed. The unions' resistance to classroom learning during COVID has driven parents to embrace these types of programs.
Some students will still need one-to-one attention from a teacher. Some parents are simply not equipped to homeschool or supervise modular learning. Some students will thrive in a classroom environment. Others will do better with modular learning systems.
The choice should depend upon the student's best interests, not the union's.
Conan the Grammarian at December 21, 2020 6:35 AM
G-d willing, we will have grandchildren in about 2 years. Our daughter and SIL are very much aware of the poor quality of public schooling in general, and of the typical PC brainwashing that has only been getting worse each year. It will be very interesting to see how they end up crafting a quality education for their kids.
They are already taking an affirmative step to escape "blue" propaganda by moving to Texas in a few months.
RigelDog at December 21, 2020 8:06 AM
NicoleK, prior to this you really had two distinct groups who did homeschooling. Those who were really interested in education and those who really rejected education. So the people who were homeschooled broke into very different groups, those who were the best educated and those who could barely read and write.
As a person with young kids (K and 1st) who has firsthand experience with 'distance learning' there really is no fundamental difference between 'distance learning' and 'homeschooling'. A the root the kids are learning at home. Euphemisms fall apart in the face of reality. So one everyone is forced to homeschool the difference isn't between in school and in home learning. It is which program has the better quality and which one costs more. On both those metrics the public schools lose.
There is already a robust market for homeschool programs. They aren't new in any way. So most of the problems that can be solved have been solved. Public schools trying to reinvent the wheel can't compete on quality. Especially since their top priority is jobs not education.
(And that isn't an attack on teachers. Teachers work at public schools, but they aren't in charge.)
As for cost, when I looked things up back in August the programs were 50%-90% cheaper than what we are paying for our local schools. So the cost comparison isn't even close.
Ben at December 21, 2020 8:06 AM
I hate to disappoint, RigelDog, but public schools in the US are pretty uniform. In New Orleans you have a bit more Cajun music than you do in LA. But that is pretty much the only difference.
Ben at December 21, 2020 8:13 AM
Ben is correct. All schools pretty much use the same curriculum and that’s bc the biggest textbook supplier is Pearson. They rule the K-12 world. It used to be that CA and TX were educational loadstones bc they created the greatest demand for textbooks. Once Common Core became popular though, that weight shifted to from state selected curriculums to what is essentially a federal curriculum, Common Core. Now Pearson is in control bc they conform to CC standards. States like Texas have seen their power watered down bc more states went CC, than not. Therefore, even in states where technically CC is not taught, like TX, it actually is bc Texas buys from Pearson.
When my daughter started elementary school, the teachers used to teach themes, like space, dinosaurs, etc. and all aspects of teaching that week would fit that theme. No more. Between state testing requirements, and CC those days, that many of us remember, are gone. Schools must stay on a strict schedule to conform to testing guidelines. Fortunately, my child just missed most of this, but I would never put a child through that process. Add on all the new social experimentation and my advice is, if you have small children get them out now get them and teach at home. The system is not designed for student success. It is an elaborate exercise in box checking.
Sheep Mom at December 21, 2020 12:45 PM
My granddaughters were in a pod in their home with four other young women. My son had spare room and fixed it up for the purpose.
They hired a tech-savvy young woman to moderate the group and used the system's curriculum for distance learning. Unfortunately, a bogus C19 alert broke it up.
If funding follows the kids, the daycare issue--which is to say having an adult around--would be manageable.
I saw an arithmetic program some years ago. Very clever. And the reading program was well done. The questions were clear. No ambiguity to trip up the reader.
Richard Aubrey at December 21, 2020 2:13 PM
Public school teachers are not going to like the world they return to once this episode subsides. Because they've completely destroyed any good will people have had towards them. And what I've noticed, is that it's been the people I know who have always been stalwart defenders of public schools and teachers who are some of the angriest.
norah at December 21, 2020 2:38 PM
I cannot wait for my office to open back up. Yes, it’s nice not to have to commute. But I waste more time dealing with 100s of extra Slack messages per day, poor internet connections, having to train new hires with screenshares and screenshots, not being able to just talk to the people I need to talk to because people have to watch their kids, saying “hey your video is frozen.. hello... hello?” a dozen times a day, and getting messages at weird times because people are working weird hours. Trouble-shooting technology and VPN issues have also become a daily nightmare. I realize tons of companies operate across time zones or have been 100% remote for years, but the company i work for was ill prepared for this.
Oh and I miss just being able to talk to people about non-work stuff in the office kitchen.
I don’t see us ever going back to 100% in person, but I’d love to have, say, three days everyone in the office, two days from home.
sofar at December 21, 2020 4:10 PM
My wife's company is having the same issues. They are based in California and are using contract employees from all over. She usually has at least one or two VPN issues per day. The company simply was not ready for the entire workload to be borne online through distance connections.
Conan the Grammarian at December 21, 2020 4:38 PM
Worry about schools all you wish.
The real hell will arrive when all of these administrations who demanded lockdown realize they killed all of their revenue, but kept paying all of their staff -- and they won't be able to in 2021.
Radwaste at December 21, 2020 7:03 PM
That is why blue states are demanding a bailout from the federal. And if you are bailing out why stop at covid issues. Illinois wants a bailout for the last fifty years. And maybe for the next fifty too if they can get it.
Where will the federal government get that money? After all their revenues are impacted as well. Who cares? They are already spending $1.25 for every $1 that comes in. What is another 25c on top?
Ben at December 22, 2020 5:58 AM
The only way this comes back around to bite the education "profession" is if the public taxes follow the student instead being allocated to public school districts. The collectivist nature of these taxes make it near impossible for individual parents to exert any control on the schools.
Do that, and you'll solve most of the problems with public schools and public teachers unions in short order.
ruralcounsel at December 23, 2020 11:41 AM
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