dougthonus wrote:coldfish wrote:As it stands, most high school and college kids are looking at having two of their years majorly screwed with and no, they aren't getting it back. The graduations are gone, the senior proms are gone, the spring activities are gone and likely, so are the fall. Months of times with friends are gone.
Those are formative years too. The brain develops on a fixed schedule and its not going on hold for covid. These are lifelong scars that people will carry.
My daughter was a HS senior. She didn't get to have closure on anything. No prom, no graduation, no saying goodbye to countless acquaintances that she knew well but not well enough to stay in touch with, no yearbook signings, none of that good shared community feeling of being done together. I think it will permanently affect her to have missed out on all of that.
My younger daughter (freshman in HS) probably didn't miss anything. My step kids (junior in college and junior in HS) also probably didn't really miss anything (assuming they go back). So it definitely depends pretty specifically where you were in this situation IMO. I don't think you really lose two years of college / HS. My stepson had to come home 2 months early, and didn't really miss a year.
Who knows what will happen this year coming up, but I doubt he'll lose the whole year.
I do wonder if this will push for massive education reform, because people realize how much they are overpaying for this school experience. My daughter that graduated is going to community college at least, so she's not spending a crap ton of money on this.
As far as the 2 years thing: There are days where I think this is going to fizzle out. With the long summer, improved testing, upcoming treatments and general awareness, this isn't going to be a thing going forward. There are other days when I think this is going to come roaring back in the fall and force us to close schools for a good bit of next year. At the time I wrote that, I was feeling negative. Right now I'm more optimistic. I told my son last night that there is a 60/40 chance he will play in the fall and he better start working out.
As far as education, man I can rant on that for hours. Myself and my wife were the teachers for the last quarter and we got an eyeful of how things work. Both of my kids had their best ever quarters from a grade standpoint. I wasn't sure if it was due to a change in grading scale, difficulty or whatever but my cousin is a teacher. I spoke to him and he was honest. He said the quality of work he was getting from his students got radically better when they started homeschooling. He was stunned and it really forced him to re-evaluate the whole process. His take (which as a parent, I agree with):
- His in class lectures are worthless. Its too early in the morning and there are too many distractions for kids. Pre-recorded videos explaining concepts that kids can review at their own pace at a time of their choosing work better.
- Just in general, teenagers function better at night. The early school schedule for high schoolers makes them all zombies.
- Doing everything online forced the teachers to be more organized and put things out there for the kids so that its easier for them to keep up and catch up.
Regardless, I really wish that we had leadership that had the ability to take advantage of this. I feel that our education system could take a massive leap forward with everything that was learned.
And yeah, what we pay is a joke. I strongly suspect that a well programmed system could do a much better job teaching children with far less teachers. The shutdown was not good for that particular profession.
And +1 on your daughter. That's tough. I will say that my daughter is in 9th grade and while the damage done wasn't nearly as bad, the lack of social interaction for an extended period of time really was not good for her mentally.
