WaPo Op-Ed: ‘Homeschooling’ During ChineseCoronavirus ‘Damaging’ to Children – IOTW Report

WaPo Op-Ed: ‘Homeschooling’ During ChineseCoronavirus ‘Damaging’ to Children

Breitbart: A former education commissioner of Tennessee said in an op-ed published Friday that children who are away from their public schools during the coronavirus crisis will suffer “damaging” effects with “iPads and parents” serving as their new teachers.

“Homeschooling during the coronavirus will set back a generation of children,” reads the headline of an op-ed at the Washington Post Friday by Kevin Huffman, now a partner at the City Fund, an education nonprofit that says it “partners with local leaders to create innovative public school systems.”

Huffman wrote:

As the coronavirus pandemic closes schools, in some cases until September, American children this month met their new English, math, science and homeroom teachers: their iPads and their parents. Classes are going online, if they exist at all. The United States is embarking on a massive, months-long virtual-pedagogy experiment, and it is not likely to end well. Years of research shows that online schooling is ineffective — and that students suffer significant learning losses when they have a long break from school.

While the sudden coronavirus crisis has caught many public school districts and parents off-guard regarding setting up distance learning for students, Huffman devoted much of his column to denigrating what he claims are “lackluster” virtual learning charter schools:

[S]tudies looked at schools specifically designed to teach coursework online, frequently with huge sums of money invested in research and planning. If they can’t make it work, “it seems unlikely that parents and teachers Googling resources will” do any better, says Stanford economist and education researcher Eric Hanushek.

Huffman also claimed children suffer similar “damaging” effects in academic performance due to long summer vacations. MORE

29 Comments on WaPo Op-Ed: ‘Homeschooling’ During ChineseCoronavirus ‘Damaging’ to Children

  1. All the tools are there for home schooling for anybody that wants to do it. My wife did it with our 3 girls, now out and glad they/we did.
    Get your kids out of government indoctrination centers, you won’t be sorry.

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  2. The confused look on the poor kids faces when faced with the revolutionary war, the Battle of Tripoli and the Barbary pirates, the Emancipation proclimation, Lincoln was a republican, the Holocaust, the cold war, the Cuban missile crisis, Ronald Reagan and his part in dismantling the Berlin wall and numerous other things they’ve never heard about. Then all the questions to the teachers upon finally returning to school. This could be the best thing to happen to education in decades.

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  3. Next week it will be straight-up racist to homeschool.

    “.. an education nonprofit that says it “partners with local leaders to create innovative public school systems.”

    Hucksters leeching off of taxpayers. We had one of these charlatans telling teachers that they should stand on student work tables to get their attention.

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  4. A couple days on how to tie a noose. A week or so on the mechanical engineering of being sure “that support will accept the shock” (tip: moms & dads, not merely “hold” a steady) “application of that weight”. Gulag, if you’re actually worried about “snap” versus “pop” distances. It’s not rocket surgery. (Nor lesbian mathematics. I know. Oh, yeah, I know.)

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  5. Perhaps the government can form ‘concentrated learning facilities’. Intense studies will be required to ensure the correct behavior is instilled in the students permanently. Each student will be expected to observe the other students for lapses in application of those lessons so corrective actions can be instigated.

    Students will also be urged to participate in events outside the boundaries of the facilities to ensure the state receives full reimbursement for it’s efforts.

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  6. Even if home schooling does damage kids, which IMO is a fatuous position to take, that damage is negligible compared to the damage kids suffer by their forced participation in the collectivist brainwashing of govt child indoctrination institutions, a/k/a “public schools”.

    Keep ’em home, parents. Everyone who matters will be better off, and your kids will thank you for it sooner or later. Probably sooner.

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  7. “homeschooling” is bad for the teachers unions.

    good parents, who care about their children, really care about their children, aren’t sending them to public schools already!

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  8. Son has two girls, pre highschool. They are keeping diarys/journals and write every day – Dad has explained the value of having written history, hoping they will be more interested in all history. They are playing card games – great for math skills. They are hiking in woods – great for science questions dad can answer. Son is reading to them, and they are reading their own books. Little to no screen time of any kind – socializing with family instead. Eldest is almost teen, and it has been wonderful to get away from all the difficult experiences with classmates at that age. How can this harm? Our greatest minds of the past had these kinds of childhoods.

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  9. Our government overlords are currently teaching all we citizens, children included, how to squeal on each other, not to attend church, pad a fiscal bill with enough sugar to coat their pockets for years, use insider information to keep their golden eggs golden, allow non-citizens to take preference over us, shut down the constitution, ruin an economic system that hundreds of millions of people need and depend on, close down all family support systems and person to person relationships, and lie every day to us when not squabbling with each other and doing nothing of consequence or importance!

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  10. @Graceia – VERY well put! I have two sons myself IN high school, public high school.

    Who here remembers the concept of “Shop” at High School?

    My boys are learning how to sheet rock and tape right now and then hopefully paint some of the exterior wood portion of the house.

    THAT’S my version of ‘home schooling’ and of course what they can get done from the remote learning. It seems to be working a few days in and if this is a success a month later?? IOW they are NOT complaining of having to go to school and they walk a mile to do so.

    THIS is a game changer and has a rippling effect both good and bad.

    Same goes for those that are working from home right now. You really think people, who have the ability, to work from home will in the future put in a full week in the office???

    Nope, not going to happen, I hear and am experiencing that the roads ARE less traveled, less traffic, less time commuting…less pollution. Maybe except for the Cross Bronx Expressway!?

    If that could be sustained why not??

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  11. Meaning: home schooled kids will learn how to solve everyday problems; learn they are not anymore special than anyone else; learn how hard a parent has to work to keep a home and make a living; learn more in one day than they learned school in a month; learn actual American history from their familes and neighors instead of from CORRUPT leftist hacks shilling for their facist handlers.

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  12. As a former homeschooling parent, these government beaurucrats can go to hell. Most home schoolers do a better job in a shorter amount of time. I wish more people would open their eyes and stand up for their rights. The majority of our country and most of our successful military leaders of the greater years were all home schooled. It sickens me how much of our liberty, rights and freedoms are being given away on a silver platter.

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  13. Dear teachers, I know there are some great ones. That being said, kids don’t belong to you. You have no constitutional or natural right to them. I would prefer every teacher and
    administrator earn every dollar they get, just like us. And if they fall short we demand that tax money back in vouchers to be spent on Ed as we see fit. If you are a great teacher you have nothing to fear. PS we need to localize all schools.
    If it saves one child….

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