Talk is Cheap

Americans talk a lot.

It doesn’t always mean very much. Or that we always mean what we say. Or whether there is truth or diversion or just hearing ourselves talk.

Because of a fifty year failure of education many of us don’t know what we’re talking about.

The young use Facebook, texting and twitter rather than talk and because it saves time and the trouble of spelling and punctuating real sentences, the kind you need to turn thoughts into words to be understood.

Nowhere is the use and misuse of words more apparent and continuous than in the world of politics.

Here words so often cover up a lack of knowledge, ideas, true feelings, genuine caring and humanity. Is this a brutal and deserved assessment of our political arena? When 74 million people and an entire political party accept a blatant and well-telegraphed lie how can we believe otherwise?

But nowhere in America are words more cheaply and carelessly used than in the idea that America loves and cares for its children. Because if that was true, America would be deeply concerned about what is happening to them now that they have lost a year of schooling…a loss so deep for so many millions of kids that it threatens their futures.

Is there a parental outcry? Are there marches claiming Children’s Lives Matter?

None that we hear.

SCHOOLS CLOSE

February and March, 2020 were nightmares of fear and national anxiety.

A disease that no one understood was hospitalizing and killing people here and everywhere with stunning speed and ferocity. A world-wide pandemic was declared and everything began shutting down. Frightened, people stepped into bubbles of safety and out of the World as we know it.

Schools closed in March because that seemed the safest and wisest step.

And then America and the World settled into its new normal.

By April and May it became apparent that most schooling in most of America would stayed closed and would have to come “remotely” “long distance” through the use of computers.

The adult world had found its own “remote-long distance” approach to business meetings through Zoom. It worked for most…and it was readily available and easily accessible..

But as bad luck would have It, not for children. For children of all ages remote learning was not available at all. They had no computers. They had no WiFi connection. For their more fortunate neighbors, remote leaning became no learning at all. Teachers never learned how to deliver their lesson plans by sitting in front of a camera in school or at home and teaching full classes that way.

And children never had to sit still for hours focused on a screen trying to follow what was going on with little or no help from anyone.

The remote learning formula was bound to fail. Neither teachers nor their students were ready for it. Time would show that it did but the reasons for failure could have been avoided at least to some degree.

The Summer of 2020 was coming and teachers were going to be trained to teach remotely, how to manage split classes…some few in the classroom, the rest at home. They had two solid months to learn to improvise…to learn how to reach and hold children. When school started again in September they would be ready if the pandemic was still out of control.

But that training never took place…or if some attempt was made it was crammed into a few days and that was all.

So September came and nothing was new. The pandemic continued furiously. Remote learning continued…worthlessly.

A LOST YEAR

A year has passed and vaccines and their delivery punctuate the days.

There is great hope for a return to normal throughout the country and the World. The economies of both are in disarray but the focus is on what must be done to bring it all back.

The focus is not on schools. The focus is not on what children have lost.

Little by little everything is opening. Many school systems across the country have reopened and resumed at least for these few months of Spring.

But nowhere in this country is there a single word about dealing with this lost year of education.

The facts show that it has been a significant loss..

High school seniors have no confidence in their ability to qualify for college…to seek scholarships…to know what they lost in their senior year.

In New York City which has barely opened schools at all, they are planning to fully open schools in the Fall. Now there is little but talk. The Teacher’s Union has argued for safer environments. And has successfully kept schools closed. Parents meekly complain about the difficulties of working at home and trying to help their kids with homework they themselves don’t understand.

Once upon a time in America, the “tripod” of Teacher, child and Mom made America’s public education system the most successful the World had ever known.

When Moms went to work, the tripod was broken — and never fixed, never replaced…simply forgotten.

Public education in America has never been the same.

Sadly, Parent Teacher Associations which once brought parents and teachers together in a strong and affirmative way, no longer attempt to have the influence they once did. They seem to exist only for old time’s sake.

When New York City Moms recently began to press back against the Teacher’s Union’s insistence that schools not reopen until certain variables were met…the noise was brief and unsuccessful.

And so here and across the country where schools are just beginning to get more children inside, the lost year, like a disease of its own, continues unabated.

Not one school system has had the courage to simply say: We have to do the entire year over again for the millions of children who need it.

Not one school system has publicly stated that we could use the Summer months, not for a vacation, but to get the children back to school and comprehensively focus on the major elements of subject matter so intently that we can make up for the loss without necessarily having to repeat the entire year…as if it never took place at all.

But all we get is silence.

Does America love its children? Probably…but talk is cheap.

Love takes an effort.