With the rise and preeminence of standardized tests after the NCLB (2002) (source here), teachers found that more and more of their time was devoted to “teaching to the test.” Everyone claimed that it should not be that way, but everyone also expected results. If kids didn’t do well, it was always the teacher’s fault. “What did you do wrong?” was hurled at those teachers whose classes did less than expected. Few seemed to think of the numerous outside forces that affected the students they worked with. Just to name a few: Did the student have dinner last night? Breakfast this morning? Sleep enough? Watch TV until the small hours of the night? Get siblings ready for school? Have to work a part-time job to help meet the bills? All of these things have NOTHING to do with the teacher, but the teacher takes the blame anyway.
Let’s put it into real-time hours. I realize there may be some variation among schools, but let’s go with a typical scenario. Students who don’t miss a day of school are in class for 7.5 hours a day, 5 days a week, for a total of 37.5 hours per week. That’s out of 168 hours we all have each week. Over the course of a typical school year of 180 days, that’s 1,350 hours of total time in school. Over that same year, we all have 8,760 hours of time to work with. That means that students are in school a little over 15% of their time in a given year. So what’s going on with the other 85% of the student’s time? Are teachers supposed to give students so much nurturing, knowledge, guidance, love, acceptance, compassion, self-esteem, and brilliant advice that it sees the student through the other 85% of their year? Sounds like a bad joke.
So what does all that have to do with the title of this post? In this COVID-19 crazy world, particularly here in the U.S., we have seen that families are in need of food assistance, day care assistance, cash assistance, help with the rent/mortgage, oh, and they need someone to help teach their children. Guess what part of that teachers were able to help with during the messed-up end of school back in the spring? When school was suddenly out, how many families started to realize what all a teacher, and the schools, do for them?
Now a vocal minority is desperate to get kids back to school, in-person, full time. I hear people on the news all the time saying, “How can I go back to work with the kids here all day?” or “How are we supposed to re-open the economy without schools being open?” So schools don’t need to teach students, they simply need to babysit them. I guess that makes it easier for everyone involved. But wait, there’s more. I hear other people with concerns over how kids from low-income households are going to eat. Some kids get most of their daily food from school breakfast and lunch programs. No one wants kids to go hungry. Another thing I hear is “How will they socialize with their friends?” So now schools are a social club along with everything else.
Teachers, and schools, cannot be all things for all kids. They simply cannot. Aside from not having students in the building for more than a fraction of the time each year, there is not the money, ability, desire, or expertise to do all those things. Teachers are wonderful at knowing and teaching their respective subjects, but no one is an expert in everything. In addition, so many people vote no for school levies saying that “teachers and districts need to make do with what they have.” Why is that not good enough for all those hurting families out there? Make do with what you have. And yes, I realize when I say it that way, it sounds very callous. Imagine how it feels to teachers to hear that very thing year after year.
COVID-19 has exposed many things about the systemic problems and flawed structures ingrained in U.S. social safety nets. From my way of thinking, the only safety net seems to be schools. Schools are supposed to be all things for all families. People seem to make it through the summer, somehow, but thank God for school starting up regular as clockwork. School should not, and I daresay cannot, be the safety net for our society. There are many cracks, many places where kids and families can and do fall through and suffer for it. My heart goes out to all of them.
But I am not the government. I have not broken everything so badly that the only recourse is to say schools must open and shove as many kids into a classroom as we can. That will somehow fix all the other problems for us. Kids will have meals to eat. Parents will be able to go back to work. Kids will be able to socialize with friends. Yes, school seems to be a panacea for all of our troubles. Except that it isn’t. The U.S.—or at least our social contracts—are broken. Our safety nets are either gone or never existed. But let’s not assume that schools can do something that has been in need of doing for decades—fix all of our problems.