One of the unintended consequences of remote learning and public school closures is the damage they are likely to inflict on the most vulnerable children, according to a report earlier this month on EducationPost.org.
Maureen Kelleher, a senior writer at the website, cited a Bellwether Education report aimed to lay out some issues that could arise from these measures, which have kept students out of the classroom.
She wrote there is a chance there will be three million kids who simply stop attending classes altogether.
Wendy Poveda, the principal of an elementary school in Washington Heights, told The New York Times she noticed some of her students were absent a lot during school… because they were embarrassed they didn’t have clean clothes.
So, she installed a laundry room near the school’s cafeteria, the paper reported. The paper also said Ms. Poveda has kept up the intimate attention to her students but pointed out many schools do not have the staff to assist the most vulnerable students.
Matthew Cruger, a neuropsychologist at the Child Mind Institute in New York City, told the Times that a three-month gap in education is unlikely to be extreme for a child, but “a year, we just don’t know. For atypically developing kids, it is a very big deal.”
Ms. Kelleher said it is a step in the right direction that the problem has been identified and called on school districts to make an effort to keep track of attendance and identify students who are in most need of support.
She wrote,
“As the researchers note, if even one in 20 of those students permanently loses contact with school, we’re talking about a total number of students that would suddenly become the second-largest school district in the United States, surpassing Chicago and Los Angeles.”
TREND FORECAST: As the “Greatest Depression” worsens and the rich get richer, the middle class will continue to shrink and the lower class will sink into poverty, thus expanding the gap between rich and poor.
The vast majority of children in those segments of society that are already in dire states will fall deeper into despair without the educational, spiritual, and psychological tools of advancement.
This downward socioeconomic trend was accelerating before the launch of the COVID War.
For society to advance, the true meaning of the human spirit must accelerate beyond the provincial political mindset that rules the human species.
The Renaissance followed the Black Plague. “Renaissance 2.0” could advance society to much higher levels following the coronavirus panic and hysteria.