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*steps up onto soapbox, taps mic*
Y'all, the kids are not automatically going to be alright.
Yes, kids from middle-to-upper SES homes w/parents who read them bedtime stories, cook w/them to help them learn fractions & chemistry, & take them on nature walks will probably be OK.
Y'all, the kids are not automatically going to be alright.
Yes, kids from middle-to-upper SES homes w/parents who read them bedtime stories, cook w/them to help them learn fractions & chemistry, & take them on nature walks will probably be OK.
But even those kids will not automatically be OK. My parents, crunchy types, had friends w/kids my age who homeschooled back before it was strictly legal. Yes, those kids got read alouds, fractions, and nature studies.
Those kids also got admitted to the Ivy League! Great, right? Up until the point that a child who'd never had to study for a final exam flunked out. Worse, a con artist recognized an innocent ripe for the picking, cue domestic violence and financial abuse. It's ugly, even now.
B/c of the quarantine, we're all locking up our kids up like homeschoolers used to be accused of doing, and even for the high-SES among us, it's not a tolerable long term parenting strategy. Our kids need to be out in the world, need to be challenged with academics & con artists.
For the kids w/parents working on the front lines, risking their lives to stock grocery stores, clean hospital wards, and deliver household necessities? It's not OK, and they're not going to be OK watching TV for weeks or months on end w/out intellectual challenge.
I understand why its tempting just to say, "I sat around and watched sitcoms, and I'm fine." But it's the same logic used to refute seat-belts, cigarette ads, & non-corporal punishment. Not everyone will be fine, and I've spent major holidays with the not-fine kids.
For every book my daughters encounter, another child is watching cat videos on YouTube, or worse, stuck in an apartment w/out any books, pencils, or access to the Internet. I've been in those apartments. Intellectual deprivation takes its toll, just like sensory deprivation.
In the long run, it doesn't make much of a difference if a child was intellectually deprived or was born with a low-IQ--the end result often looks the same. That's what teachers worry about, and they're right to do so.
So if you want to get all sanctimonious about how your child will learn organically from the world, go right ahead. Let me know how it went when they're 35 and hiding from their abuser, unable to pass a college entrance exam, stuck working for cash under the table.
