COLUMN: Pandemic highlights importance of teachers, early education
How is the virtual education system faring in your neighborhood? Just about everybody has a soft spot for kids, and in spite of the divisiveness that permeates our country, most people are genuinely concerned about the disruption to the nation’s education systems – from kindergarten all the way to post graduate programs.
One of the insights to have emerged from the chaos is the awareness that a large percentage of our citizens have no idea of our nation’s history or the content of the U.S. Constitution. Happily, a new appreciation for teachers has been gained, especially those who minister to the children in the lower grades. I’m a bit of an oddball in that, although I have taught at various levels of college, I have maximum regard for those who teach the very youngest.
Education being such a potent force for social mobility, I wonder why we don’t give more attention to it. Much has been written about the unexpected virtues that have accrued from the current pandemic, but except perhaps for causing some of us to re-examine the meaning of our existence, the great benefit that I see emerging is the renewed appreciation of teachers of all stripes.
My reverence for teachers in the lower grades stems from the fact that so much of our attitude toward learning is formed at the elementary level. Much about us is shaped even before we even enter pre-K. This is a brutal truth: The environment in which a child spends his early months has much to do with his or her academic destiny, and during the recent period of “shelter at home” the spectrum of opportunities has been starkly apparent. More than even we can see the children raised in poverty are facing monumental hurdles well before they even start school.
Thousands of pages have been written about the current problems with at-home education, most of it about the plight of parents whose kids were suddenly back on the parents’ doorstep. Even if their home was without the tools of “incidental learning” (books, magazines, musical instruments, technology) these kids will soon be back in a classroom.
What about the younger children, those who are constantly at home? Some will be in environments calculated to stimulate and instill curiosity, but many others will not. What can be done to empower these?
Some years ago, the Education Committee at the Greater Macon Chamber of Commerce urged its members to collect magazines suitable for children of various ages and distribute them through the Food Bank. It was a wonderful idea, but it died out without a “spark plug” to drive it. We should look at this idea again. Any church or other service organizations could replicate this low-cost feat.
An inspiring idea comes from Dolly Parton (not whom you’d expect). Now celebrating its 25th anniversary, Parton’s Imagination Library has given away over 132 million free books to children. The program, which honors Parton’s father, who was unable to read and write, delivers free books to kids each month from birth to age five. The first book that each child receives is one that many of us will find familiar is the inspirational, “The Little Engine That Could.”
Whatever the cost and however it is done, it is imperative that we create the opportunities to launch the very youngest among us, for they hold the key to what comes. We worry about crime and its handmaids poverty and blight, failing to realize that the ultimate price of these social ills is the devastation of the human spirit.
The pandemic has given us the occasion for a new look at education, and while some parents have the luxury of worrying about such things as the loss of summer camps, in many homes, early learning must take priority. Those of us who have first-hand experience can attest that Bibb Schools serve us well. Several of Central High School’s graduating class last year, as is customary, went off to some of the nation’s finest institutions -- UGA, Georgia Tech, MIT, etc., but the students who should worry us are the ones who will not get to Central, who are not read to as children, who don’t see books and magazines scattered about their houses, who have never visited the Museum of Arts and Sciences or Zoo Atlanta. Their seeds were never planted.
We are currently being reminded in a powerful way that always the parent is the child’s first teacher. The challenge facing our community is to ensure that even the less-well equipped parents have the incentive, the materials and the time to stand at the front of these first “classrooms.”