COVID's education crisis: A lost generation?

One thing left out here is something I saw with some students. They learned their parents couldn't be bothered with them or didn't really like them. You are home because of a pandemic, it was a struggle for so many, but imagine your mom or dad posting on Facebook about how annoyed they are that the school is closed and you are stuck with your kids? Some people were never meant to have children and covid put that in a big spotlight. As far as academics they will get there. The bigger issues are the entitlement and lack of respect kids and parents show education. But that was going on looooong before covid. Does the education system need to be upgraded for future learning? Absolutely! The old 1950's model needs to go and so does the ridiculous amount of testing. Prek students should be learning how to share and how to tie their shoes and maybe walk in nature and learn about their environment. Writing a paragraph? Not yet.

Let’s be honest, most parents just see public schools as free babysitting.

The No Child Left Behind policy contributed a lot to low performing children advancing when they should not have.

As an educator, I saw many problems taking place during covid that contributed to all of this. 1. We were forced to teach in a very new with little time to create an effective plan for doing so. We were on spring break and never went back to the classroom. They expected our virtual school day to look exactly like a face to face school day, which was ridiculous. In my opinion, it would have been the perfect time to have small groups and one on one sessions with students. 2 We were stressed out because the district was more concerned with keeping track of what WE were doing every single minute of the day instead of us allowing to focus on our mental health and just teaching our students. 3. Students still had to take major assessments online. Why were we assessing students is beyond me. It was business as normal during a time of crisis. 4. When we returned to the classroom in the fall, they treated everything as though NOTHING had happened. There was no revamping of the curriculum, remediation, or intervention to address skills that students never learned. Covid is one of the main reasons I am no longer a classroom teacher. It was the push I needed to work in other areas of education. Good luck to those of you who are still in the trenches.

I worked at a Catholic school where they never stopped in person learning and still the kids are not doing well; they’re are so many factors that were already in play. We have a generation of poorly behaved kids who couldn’t care less about learning and that along with other factors are driving teachers out of the schools. Crisis meets crisis.

As a teacher, one big setback for younger kids has been developing social skills, and forming peer relationships is one of the hardest challenges .

As a high schooler during the pandemic (now a community college student), I agree with a lot of what was said. Me personally, I fell into a huge depression hole during the pandemic. I was an excellent student before, straight As, lots of motivation to work hard, and during covid I failed all my classes, never turned in assignments, so much so that I stopped caring at all. I no longer felt fear or remorse when I didn't do my work or attend class. To this day, I am struggling to stay motivated. It wasn't the pandemic, in particular, that created this laziness in me, but the idea that none of this would matter in the end, because look how easily life was flipped on its head and people were suddenly dying. I knew people who died that spent their entire lives devoted to one company or one lousy field of work. I don't want that to be me, and at the time school felt like a one-way ticket to that kind of life. Overall, I'd say kids nowadays are just lacking the drive to keep going, to be respectful, to do anything worthwhile at all. Life feels so meaningless sometimes. Covid proved that.

My Wife is approaching 30 years as a teacher and she feels the pandemic hurt a great many children psycho-socially, as school was the one place they could come and be safe, have meaningful interactions and relationships with others. As well as them getting fed something of substance twice a day. There are very large number of dysfunctional households in the average school district and some localities are much worse than others. The children from those homes desperately need to be around their peers, who may have positive influences and who will hopefully be in support of their not so socially adept friends.

And everything at fault is being put on the teachers to try and fix while still underpaying, undermining their ability and their worth, and understaffing their schools.

When I talk to the students I work with, they are aware there is a lot they do not know and they are "ok" with that. They tell me the system will just let them pass anyway. I am concerned. As a parent- why not give your child home work each night: Learn the multiplication tables, Write a paragraph each night about their day, Read a book for 30 minutes and ask them about what they read. As a parent, step in and support your child academically and emotionally. Get them off the computer, Tick Tock, Tv, Movies. Have your child read books. Real books. For me, I believe the parents need to be parents and help their child learn. Not all parents do that. They say "You the teacher- that is your job. Not mine." Students need to understand their education is important- Who can help them understand that better than their parent????

My 5 year old has never been to a traditional school, just virtual and music classes. Her development is amazing, she’s reading and writing, makes friends easily and is full of life. This required intensive parental commitment, something that many parents are just unwilling to do. But I also understand that I’m in a privileged position where only one of us needs to work full time and we have access to technology. Obviously, parents in less stable financial positions do not have that kind of ability to parent so hands on and I feel for them.

I think the problem is parenting or lack thereof.

The dystopia we have created from simple indifference on almost every level is breathtaking. The gun crisis alone is making existing in this country a struggle. These kids are attempting to exist in a nation where casual mass violence is now an acceptable norm. The damage to the psychological health of these children, and adults, is incalculable. Covid accelerated an already dizzying drop in intellectual, spiritual, and societal norms. America is in a very poor state. Why? The conversation is being led by the infantile and self-serving. Where are the adults?

I am a high school teacher. Lots of parents demanded schools to be open, but now that they are, many can't be bothered to send their kids to school. Some parents have contacted me demanding tests and classwork so they kids can do it at home and not come to school! Some have nothing to say when I tell them if homeschooling may be a better option for them. I truly worry about the future. More than ever, people are proud to be ignorant and anti-science.

I think a big problem is that kids came home and did not have a support system similar to a teacher in the classroom. Whether it was a mom and dad that had to work either at home or out of the home or a mom or dad that just didnt care to help or ones that could not help. I kept my son out of 3K and preK because of the pandemic and he started Kindergarten last year and is excelling. I did my best to prepare him for what I knew he would be doing and I felt like it was a little in adequate but his teacher is amazing and he is excelling in reading and math as a Kindergartener. Its the support system that is the backbone of the child's learning potential and ability. Now parents who had to work while their kids were at school at home was I'm sure a hard thing to juggle. I do not believe that extending the school day will help. My son is in school from 8:30 to 3:30 and getting him home, homework done, some play and dinner is ALL we have time for in the afternoons and taking time away from that after noon or taking time away from sleeping is not the answer! I think America has a bad idea that more time in the classroom is the answer with a lot of Europe does not operate this way and they have great results historically. Kids are not meant to sit in a classroom for that long. And I am seeing that first hand because for 2 days the kids have not gone outside because of bad weather and I saw behavioral issues this afternoon that I usually don't deal with. I don't have all the answers but this is my experience.

I don't think the fears and psychological effects on kids during the pandemic were addressed once they returned to the classroom. There is still a complete disconnect about the need for mental health professionals in the schools. If you don't address their mental health issues brought on by the pandemic, you have no chance of kids being able to focus on the reading and the math, etc.

As a public high school science teacher, I echo the word CRISIS. That's all I'm saying, publicly. Mom and Dad... look inwards at yourselves. How involved are you in your child's academic performance?

People use to tell me my homeschooled children would be "unsocialized". Honestly I think they're better socialized than public schoolers because we still lived life as normal and met with our group of friends, social distancing and masked. They never missed socializing and had the same level of support as before the pandemic.

If missing a couple of years of school while still having online school means "a generation" is lost, your problems are bigger than missing school. Did kids lose "how to learn" ? Did they lose how to balance a budget? Did they lose how to build a light bulb? What exactly did kids lose so much of that it's a generation lost? History? geography? algebra? ... yeah all things that can be easily learned outside of school and I'm guessing more accurately and easily than in school. It is we grown ups that are bemoaning something that's easily fixable because we put too much emphasis on knowing certain stuff by a certain age, instead of teaching kids how to live in life, how to research, how to learn... luckily lots of kids are figuring it out by themselves in the age of technology.

The problem with education in this country is it's always been about what the adults want the children to learn, not what they need to learn. The school day is based around an outdated 9-5 routine parents had. And I've seen people older than the hills refuse to allow them to update or build new school buildings because they want their grandkids and great grandkids going to the same schools they went to. Yet they don't want to pay school taxes. We need to do things totally different. Kids today suffered through Covid and threats of active shooters. Who cares if they're not learning cursive?