I really feel for the kids who are younger. The effects of this are going to be with us for decades.
Unlikely. The evidence from kids who get sick enough to miss a lot of school is that at worst it takes three years for them to be indistinguishable from those with uninterrupted school attendance. Even unstructured homeschoolers, who have little to no explicit instruction of any kind, are only on average a grade level behind average children[1]. The last historically comparable school closures, for the 1918 flu pandemic, had no detectable long run effects[2].
[1] The Impact of Schooling on Academic Achievement: Evidence From Homeschooled and Traditionally Schooled Students
http://zoleerjemeer.nl/files/1313/9109/4391/The_Impact_of_Sc...
[2]School Closures During the 1918 Flu Pandemic https://www.nber.org/papers/w28246
Is this really true if the entire class missed a few years? It is very different having one kid who missed a lot and then later interacts with kids who all didn't miss a lot, and a class where every kid is behind a couple of years.
I wouldn't be surprised if kids who fell behind during remote school are clustered at the same schools.
Yes, in many places it really is. Look at what test results have been released - there is a tiny cohort of kids that managed to remain close to the normal level of achievement, and generally in areas where parents are heavily involved in schooling their kids.
> Plus you only need to look at history, and probably within your own family to find a few examples, of generations of children who are educated throughout hard truths and stressful times like war or famine and go on to be alright.
But, this is not true. If you look at generations that grew in hard times, they were doing worst. Generations that grew in war are more violent then peace generations. They have more mental health issues, drink more and so on. Famines have long term impact too. There were even studies about Holocaust survivors - even their children have more anxieties and similar mental health issues. The even affected parenting and communication of survivors enough to change children.
Education achievements now are better then they were in those generations.
> Our results are not inconsistent with an emerging literature that finds negative short-run effects of COVID-19-related school closures on learning. The situation in 1918 was starkly different from today: (1) schools closed in 1918 for many fewer days on average, (2) the 1918 virus was much deadlier to young adults and children, boosting absenteeism even in schools that stayed open, and (3) the lack of effective remote learning platforms in 1918 may have reduced the scope for school closures to increase socioeconomic inequality.
Furthermore, from the paper:
> Another important contrast is that school closures in the 1918-19 pandemic were substantially shorter than current COVID-19 related school closures, potentially limiting their effects. In our sample of 1918-19 school closures, the average closure length was 36 days, and some cities decided to make up for missing school days by extending the school year.
Closing schools is just one of the many measures society has taken to steal the prime years of life from the young to give to the elderly.
I wasn't a day behind. The class had not advanced at all.
But I'm sure the pandemic will be blamed for school unachievement for decades. It's a godsend to the school industrial complex.
If I were of college age and was able, I'd take a gap year or two without any hesitation.
Variety in age in socialization is a healthy thing, and I feel cramming entire cohorts into a 24-month bloc isn't particularly amenable to how we've evolved.
I wouldn’t bother and have seen the effects on people who did skip the last year or two. It’s been terrible for them. They’ve basically been stuck at home doing jack shit and watching years of their life disappear without any progress on literally any front.
I think it is more of a relative problem than an absolute problem.
Finally I didn't have to waste time on commute and it was way easier to ignore doubtful profs/useless courses and focus on the right things.
but yea, things may be harder if you don't know people you're studying with
I couldn't
I could only take "specialisation" - a few courses at the last year or something like that.
It could be software engineering / cybersecurity / something else
Personally, I had to take classes like "Ancient Eastern Civilizations" while pursuing a degree in Audio Production. So while the term "useless" is a bit strong, I understand where they're coming from.
There were specific required classes that I didn't like, but they weren't useless.
Prerequisites, of course, prevent one from wasting the professor's time from unprepared students.
Sure, course is never 100% useless, but when in one course you can learn "10 things" and on this one you can learn "1 thing" and have to spend similar amount of time on them meanwhile you're working full time, studying on weekends and trying to learn other things for your job/career, then things are tricky and you gotta pick - you put effort into some classes that aren't really efficent or maybe some OSS side project?
Children are resilient. What is _hurting_ them is not the school closures, but the panic and uncertainty that some people have put around this.
Simply by observing those around me, I have learned SO much about humans.
We hate uncertainty. I hate it. I remember worrying myself into a frenzy looking at all of these tables predicting exposure and risk. "If we go to the grocery store, we can't see X friend... but if YOU go to the store and spend less than 15 minutes getting peanut butter and bread..." it was a mess.
I also learned that humans are bad at responding to highly unlikely events. All throughout this pandemic, I remind myself that people are making emotional decisions not logical - and they are doing that because we all are really bad at making logical decisions. And then I remind myself to show them love and grace.
What can I do to make your experience a little less frantic? Even if only for 1 minute.