Stop these cruel experiments with our kids’ education
The world has been conducting an inadvertent socioeconomic experiment on young people, one that would in normal circumstances be prohibited for being cruel and inhuman.
As part of their efforts to control the pandemic, many countries have for parts of the past two years closed schools. Some resorted to this measure more, others less. It’s as though they had set out to test what happens in the long term to individuals, societies and nations when you deprive some children of education.
It should be obvious what’s cruel and inhuman about this. The study’s subjects, namely the kids, never had a chance to opt in or out. They just found themselves in a given country, school district, household and family — and then lived with the consequences. For many, those will be grave.
Among those now laying the groundwork for future research are Vera Freundl, Clara Stiegler and Larissa Zierow at the Ifo Institute in Munich, an economic think tank. In a new paper, they compare seven representative countries in the European Union: Poland, Germany, France, Spain, Sweden, Austria and the Netherlands.
At one extreme is Sweden, which became famous for refraining from harsh coronavirus restrictions and largely kept schools open. France and Spain, even though they had outbreaks, also tried hard to keep kids in school: They instead restricted the activities of adults more severely. Austria and the Netherlands muddled through, the latter opting more for partial closures — holding classes in shifts, for example. Germany and Poland kept kids at home longest.
In surveys, parents have confirmed that the more time children spent at home, the less time they spent learning. But it’s not just the duration of the physical school closures that mattered.
The quality varied just as much, and that depended on the digital sophistication of countries as they went into the pandemic. In this group, Sweden topped the list, with 80% of school principals in surveys saying that they were immediately ready with an online-learning platform. Germany was the laggard, with only one in three principals claiming the same. German children, in short, lost twice: in the quantity and quality of teaching.
Comparing actual learning is harder. But it’s obvious that children have huge gaps, not just in reading and math but also in social and creative skills. At my children’s school, several teachers have told me that the boys in particular have noticeably worse fine-motor skills, because during online schooling they spent so much time typing and so little writing by hand.
A Dutch study showed that the closures in the Netherlands in the spring of 2020 led to a learning loss equivalent to 20% of the academic year, or exactly as long as children stayed home.
The same study revealed that academic losses were 60% worse for children from less-educated homes, usually meaning families with lower incomes. And that’s in the relatively egalitarian Netherlands. Kids in poor households have slower broadband and fewer and older devices.
The most interesting pedagogical question to me is whether we — teachers, parents, policymakers — can ever help the children make up for these losses. In some cases, the answer is yes. France has apparently plugged the gaps in reading and math resulting from the first school closures, at least for students from educated families. But in many cases, especially when dealing with poorer children, it’ll be hard.
We also know that children who learn less will achieve and earn less. How much income will they lose over a life time?
One thing I’m sure about: The socioeconomic effects of school closures — whose epidemiological rationale is unclear — will far outlast SARS-CoV-2 itself. It seems safe to guess that the Swedens of the world will do better than the Germanies.
Since this pandemic is far from over, let’s stipulate the following: First, education is the greatest boon available to individuals and societies alike, right up there with health, so never again squander it. Second, if you still don’t grok the digital world, you shouldn’t be in education at all. And third, if you ever need to run an inadvertent socioeconomic experiment again, do it with adults who can vote, not children.