OPINION:
As governors and mayors continue cracking their COVID-19 whips, parents and other citizens are pleading “give us free.”
Many, if not most, aren’t begging for free money — the stimulus checks, extra unemployment benefits, food giveaways and such.
They’re talking about their jobs, public schools, libraries, beaches and recreational programs, and their liberties.
They’re also learning, learning the hard way, that one-size-fits-all policies and practices continue to fail.
Let us count some of the ways.
• Public school districts were ill-prepared for daily, mass electronic instruction outside of a schoolhouse.
• Teachers and their overseers weren’t prepared to grade students on school work, fearful of exposing their own bugaboos.
• Even after being assured that they would still receive free or reduced-price meals, students and their families depended on schoolhouses. Mayors and governors didn’t continue the food programs out of the kindness of their hearts; the programs already were contracted or paid for, and food and beverages would have tossed if not distributed.
• With the coronavirus forcing adults to homeschool children, the lack of electronic devices for faculty and students was exposed. School districts are now under the gun to take inventory of textbooks, laptops and desktops for all students and teachers.
• School districts and their overseers — and parents — probably wish students and teachers had been more routinely exposed to nature and not just home pets. Teachers, children and parents can learn a lot at free parks, zoos and nature centers; watching the sun and moon rise and set; and as a recent airing of “Jeopardy!” showed, learning the difference between Chaka Khan and Shaka Zulu.
Other items could easily be added to the list of failed policies. Suffice, for now, these are obvious, common teaching and learning problems that supporters of the status quo don’t want exposed.
For sure, they don’t want you to know when schools will be open. They don’t want you to know how many weeks or months before schools reopen.
Why? Because they tell you a child can learn in six weeks of summer school what he or she failed to learn in two semesters of regular schooling. So, they keep you at bay behind closed doors and computer screens so that they can continue the lie.
Schools will not reopen until people are free to return to work, and people will not be truly liberated to return to work (and worship) until safe child care centers reopen.
And you haven’t heard a peep about those centers taking in the children of nonessential workers, have you?
• Deborah Simmons can be contacted at dsimmons@washingtontimes.com.
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