Education, Post-Covid

In My Humble Opinion
1

I was reading a book talking about how one French-Canadian province started classes in May 2021 after Covid. It was critical because the emphasis was on academics and removed physical education, drama and music from the curriculum.

I don’t remember reading about this. The book claims stressing academics may increase work readiness at high character expense and debates the goals of education - a familiar debate, of course.

But it seems just as likely that since this was in the midst off Covid they tried to avoid larger groups in close proximity and the conclusions are misguided. This is not mentioned in the book.

So my questions:

  1. Is it true Québec or any other place modified their curriculum in this fashion?

  2. Should focus be temporarily more on academics to allow students to catch up on core missing material?

  3. How important do you think non-academic subjects are? What percentage of time is ideal to devote to them? Is physical activity important in education, even if the wrong lessons are sometimes emphasized?

2

I guess it is a bit esoteric, and people are probably really sick of discussing Covid. It just seemed odd the book was so willing to say the arts were sidelined for poor reasons - when arts are often revered in Quebec and there are other explanations.

3

From my own experience, and in the experience of my colleagues, the damage COVID did was more to work ethic, motivation, stamina, and grit than to skills. Catching kids up on skills would not be nearly such a problem if it weren’t for the fact that they just seem to have no sense of urgency anymore. Club and extracurricular participation has cratered; when teachers give optional morning review sessions for tests, almost no one shows. When kids have the chance to come in outside of school and do test corrections to reclaim points they lost, they don’t come. I gave a mock PSAT last week and about 10% of the junior class showed up. Pre-COVID, it was 50%.

It’s better than last year: last year, after a year at home, they wouldn’t even do classwork, let alone study outside of school. But it’s still difficult to get them to care at all. I’m at a very good magnet that traditionally sends kids to very good colleges with very good funding. It’s a school for ambitious kids. But they seem to feel entitled to the results, but no interest in putting in the time.

The most frustrating part is that they can’t see any of this. They think they are working. They are proud of themselves. But from my point of view, they are doing about 75% of what their peers were doing pre-COVID. It’s not about what they didn’t learn before, it’s what they aren’t learning now. For example, I teach AP Macroeconomics. No one ever knows anything about the subject before they take it, so skill gaps from the 2020-2021 school year really aren’t an issue. But they are learning it more slowly than kids pre-COVID, because they aren’t thinking as hard in class. They think as long as they are awake in class, they’ve done their part and if they can’t understand it after passively listening, that’s on me, or it’s too hard, or they are too stupid.

Not all of them are like this, but a lot are.

Given that, I think things like electives are actually super important because we need to build interest in school again, and because, even more, we need to teach them to once again actively pursue their interests, to take on projects, to learn for fun. So many are in perpetual “consumer of light entertainment” mode.