An Open Letter to the Public Schools of the New Normal and the Parents Held at their Mercy
<Originally published on October 20th, 2020>
“Don’t mind me; I’m just a Waldorf snob.”
This is what I say to my friends when we start talking education. Despite the negative connotations attached to the word ‘snob’, it’s true. I have adored the Waldorf methodology since I first toured a Waldorf preschool and fingered the handmade woolen dolls, the tiny faces left blank so that toddlers could imagine their own features onto the head-shaped canvases. That was five years ago.
Unfortunately, our Waldorf school was closed in the pandemic, as were all South American schools, and we now find ourselves displaced thousands of miles north, back in Kentucky and trying to weather the COVID-induced storm that continues to rage on. I am terrible at homeschooling, so I finally made the decision to send my kids to the local public school when they began in-person classes again. We are now a month into this public school adventure. I’m being confronted with what they are calling “the New Normal”, and it is terrifying.
Coming from the Waldorf methodology, where nature-led and tactile activities are the name of the game, you can imagine my surprise after the first day of American public school.
“What did you do today?” I ask my nine-year-old daughter as she returns home from the third grade. We’ll call her L.
“We just worked on the laptop,” replies L, today and every other day since. Further questioning reveals that the students are simply continuing with the virtual learning programs that were implemented during the pandemic.
There is little change now that they are back in the classroom. The teachers act as supervisors as the children watch video lessons and then take endless quizzes on the laptop to test their ability to absorb the information in each video.
All math assignments are completed on a keyboard, as are science lessons, English quizzes, and even “written assignments”. My daughter receives traditional math instruction at her Waldorf school in Colombia, so she doesn’t know common core math from her big toe. When she asked for scratch paper to do a long addition equation, the teacher said no.
“You have to learn to do it in your head,” was the reply. In her head? Or on a screen?
The playgrounds are closed due to COVID.
“It’s just too hard to keep them sanitized,” they say. The kids play on concrete or, if it’s not too wet, sometimes they even play on the grass in an empty field. Recess is 20 minutes out of an 8.5 hour school day. One day it rained. The kids couldn’t go outside.
“What did you do instead?” I asked.
“We played computer games with each other,” replied my daughter.
“What do you mean you played computer games?”
“Yes, I played chess with Tommy. He sits next to me and we played chess against each other on our laptops,” said L.
My stomach dropped. How do you play chess against each other on a computer? How do you learn to anticipate Tommy’s next move or notice the sly glint in his eye when he tries to take your queen if there’s a monitor between you?
I think this is another shift that they will blame on COVID, but it has been happening for years. Since public schools began handing out tablets and laptops to every child, the instruction has slowly begun to shift to a more digital environment. Now the transformation is complete. Now there is no more excuse not to plug our kids into a machine and call it a day. We must stop the spread of germs, and humanity.
Parents, I call BS. Let’s look beyond our fear-induced hysteria and look towards a longer future. Let’s ask ourselves, how long has this been going on? Where does it end?
The rapid and alarming decline of mental health and social aptitude among America’s youth may have less to do with pharmaceuticals, video games, and processed foods than it has to do with a loss of normal human interaction.
Stop blaming capitalism, communism, guns, toxins, the far left, the far right, the other guy. Stop blaming vaccinations, cell phones, GMOs, and social media. Perhaps our children are simply losing touch with their own natural identity as social, integral, and beautifully complicated human beings.
I’m no scientist, but I know that we’re born with very few neural connections in our huge brains. Those connections are carved into the brain and psyche as we develop. But does a child’s brain develop as fully if they never use their hands to write? Does typing and clicking provide the same neural benefit? Can we learn equally as well from a screen as we can from another human, as we watch their gestures, make eye contact, and hear the nuances of inflection in their voice? Can a computer really replace a teacher?
How can a red X on a screen replace the feel of a teacher’s encouraging hand on your shoulder as she explains why you got the answer wrong? And if you write out an equation of long multiplication, you can go back to see where you made a mistake. Does a computer provide this benefit, or does it just tell you that you failed?
How can a computer screen replace the feel and weight of a chess piece in your hand as you move it to C5, waiting to watch your opponent’s reaction bloom across their face? You know, and I know, that there is no computer or tablet in the world that can replace honest, natural, human connection.
What will become of our little computer-generated cyborgs as they continue into adolescence and adulthood? Will they know how to read human facial expressions and interactions as well as we did? Will they feel comfortable writing a handwritten letter to a friend? Or will they feel lost in a human world, only finding artificial solace in the haven of the virtual reality that lives in their smartphones?
I’m calling on you, the parents, the school boards, the teachers, the lawmakers, to put-on end to this now. This is not the “New Normal”. This is the end of normal. This is the end of humanity as we know it.
Our children need to learn from a human teacher, to watch the face, eyes, and gestures as they internalize a lesson. Our children need to read and write with their own two hands and scratch out their math problems the long way. Our children need to play and touch and fight with other children, so they’ll know how to play and touch and fight as adults. Our children need to know how it feels to knock over an opponent’s queen with their own knight.
Our teachers need the education, resources, and freedom to provide the traditional instruction and interaction necessary to an integral education. The United States has one of the biggest educational budgets in the world. Maybe we need to spend less on laptops and more on chess sets. Maybe we need to spend less on virtual learning platforms and spend more on seminars and teaching workshops for our educators. After all, they will give back to our children ten-fold what we give to them. A well-educated teacher is worth a thousand laptops.
My children will go back to the Waldorf school next year when it opens again. After all, in South America I can afford it. But millions of parents in the United States cannot afford private school. They shouldn’t have to. They should be able to trust the public school system to provide, at the very least, a clean playground and some good old-fashioned pencils and erasers. An hour of free play and the equipment necessary to actually play. And maybe even a well-educated and well-prepared human teacher.
Wake up, America. Wake your kids up. Unplug them and bring them back into the natural reality of the physical world. Don’t let the pandemic become an excuse for lazy, machine-led education. Stop blaming each other for the degeneration of our culture. Take a good look at your little humans. Teach them how to human before it’s too late.