The Educational Silver Lining in America from the Covid-19 Pandemic

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By the Rev. Joe Renfro, EdD

The Corona-19 virus has been and continues to be a very threatening factor in our nation in all kinds of ways.  There are innumerable ways that it is a disaster. This pandemic is a great disaster, and it completely rocks the educational establishment!

But one factor, a possible silver lining, might be that it can be argued that it is drawing families closer together, making them more committed to relating to one another in the nuclear family and above all stressing the value of home-schooling, something once basic in our civilization in that education in the home was widespread. Parents are becoming much more central in the education at this time of crisis of their children. Yes, even in our electronic, computerized age where the youth are way ahead of adults generally in computer skills, it is possible that the family might be drawn more into the education of their children.

However, many don’t see the opportunity for parents to become more of the educational process of their children, as something to be desirable.  They feel that parents turning to home-schooling whether it is just temporarily or permanently is very bad.  John Dewey, a parent of progressivism in America, sought to see the public schools become the society’s best and wisest parent, and this is the thinking of many in the educational establishment.

A former education commissioner of Tennessee said in an op-ed published that children who are away from their public schools during the Corona virus crisis will suffer “damaging” effects with their “iPads and parents” serving as their new teachers.  “Homeschooling during the Corona virus will set back a generation of children,” reads the headline of an op-ed at the Washington Post 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.” The former commissioner, Huffman, wrote: 

As the Corona virus 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.

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

[T]he “summer slide” has been studied for decades, and researchers know that students fall backward in learning from where they were at the end of the school year. Typically, they lose between one and two months of progress after a ten-week break. This “‘wastes’ so much of the knowledge students have gained during the school year” and forces teachers to spend time “‘re-teaching’ last year’s content, likely contributing to the repetitiveness of the typical U.S. curriculum,” according to a Brooking’s Institution report.

Needless to say, Huffman and many of those in the establishment who see things similarly do not see a possible silver lining in the closing of the schools for the COVID-19 Virus.

But there is another side to the story, which is the possible silver-lining that I would like to suggest.

Jacqueling M. Kory of  the Westlund Fast Company (March 24, 2020) observed:

Kerry McDonald, adjunct scholar at the Cato Institute’s Center for Educational Freedom and author of  “Unschooled:  Raising Curious, Well-Educated Children  Outside The Conventional Classroom, interviewed by Breitbart News,  said: “If students can so easily forget what they have learned over a few weeks away from school, did they ever really learn it at all? Or were they just taught and tested, memorizing and regurgitating information but not really learning it? And if learning loss is so pervasive during school breaks, then what happens after students really learn the content adequately?”

“Indeed, even if one abides by standardized test data to measure learning, October’s results of the National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP), also known as the Nation’s Report Card, showed U.S. school children have made ‘no progress’ in reading or mathematics over the past decade.  (Jacqueline M. Kory of  the Westlund Fast Company, March 24, 2020)

We have the great resource of the computer, but despite all the advances in technology the public school system our nation has basically received a failing grade since the 1950s, and the generation gap way of the thinking of the 1960s has greatly altered public schooling.  As well, we have witnessed the development of the deterioration of the basic nuclear family in our land. The computer has not changed this decline. 

The modern philosophy dominant in the schools is that they should and would implant into the children the mind-sets for the progressive, up to date, behavioristic thinking to re-channel education. In this line of thinking, the family, it can be argued, is now seen by many educational thinkers as very much secondary in the education of the youth, while the state and their programs have become central!

Ben Franklin said: “Educate your children to self-control, to the habit of holding passion and prejudice and evil tendencies subject to an upright and reasoning will, and you have done much to abolish misery from their future and crimes from society”  (87 Education Quotes: Inspire Children, Parents, and Teachers—Last updated on March 16, 2020).  Notice that that this call to educate is to “your children,” not to let the state educate your children.  The Bible was once basic in education in America, as it it speaks for the moral and spiritual instruction of believers in general and of children in particular.  It lays out moral, ethical, and wise directives for the society. It places a high value upon knowledge, both of God and of his works. It describes the moral and spiritual fruits of this knowledge and defines its ultimate purpose. 

About Ben Franklin John Fea wrote:

Ezra Stiles (1727–1795), the Calvinist president of Yale College, was curious about Benjamin Franklin (1706–1790) and his faith. In 1790, he asked the nation’s senior statesman if he would commit his religious beliefs to paper. Franklin agreed. He was nearing the end of his life – he       died six weeks later – and possibly believed this was as good a time as any to summarize the religious creed by which he lived.

“Here is my Creed,” Franklin wrote to Stiles. “I believe in one God, Creator of the Universe. That He governs it by His Providence. That he ought to be worshiped. That the most acceptable Service we render to him, is doing Good to his other Children. That the Soul of Man is immortal, and will be treated with Justice in another Life respecting its Conduct in this … As for Jesus of Nazareth … I think the system of Morals and Religion as he left them to us, the best the World ever saw … but I have … some Doubts to his Divinity; though’ it is a Question I do not dogmatism upon, having never studied it, and think it is needless to busy myself with it now, where I expect soon an Opportunity of knowing the Truth with less Trouble.”

The narrative was classic Franklin, witty and to the point. Religion was worthless unless it promoted virtuous behavior. Jesus was the greatest moral teacher who ever lived, “This was an interview personally of Ben Franklin! (John Fea, “Religion And Early Politics: Benjamin Franklin and His Religious Beliefs,”  Pennsylvania Heritage, Fall 2011)

Ben Franklin learned to think, although he had very little formal education.  There is a big difference between educating in school and actual learning.  Educating is throwing the ball out, but learning is catching it.

 Franklin was not an evangelical Christian by any means, nor a reformed thinker in the strict sense, although he was a Presbyterian as a child and young teen, but he started to veer more to deism in his mid-teens.  However, he regarded the Bible as central to the education.  Educating is more a process, while learning is more a process of achieving. The central process should be understood as the working of one’s mind, not the implantation of knowledge without critical analysis, and Franklin demonstrated this by his life and achievements. He questioned about everything, but learned from it

Franklin educated himself after his early education.  His father was Josiah Franklin, soap and candle maker. His mother was Abiah Folger, a home maker. Franklin was raised as a Presbyterian, Calvinist tradition.  At eight years old young Benjamin Franklin started attending South Grammar School (Boston Latin) showing early talent, moving from the middle of the class to the top of it within a year. The following year he attended George Brownell’s English School, a school for writing and arithmetic. He showed great talent for writing and little for arithmetic.

Young Franklin loved reading; he would borrow books from friends and save every penny to buy books. When he was sixteen, he became a vegetarian partly because he did not like to eat anything that was killed and partly to save money to buy books. He read voraciously trying to improve his writing style, grammar and eloquence. His father intended for Benjamin, as his youngest son, to serve in church but he showed no inclination for it. Unfortunately, he had to cut his education short as his father could not afford paying for it. (Benjamin Franklin-Historical Society) 

But maybe this was not unfortunate, for he was able to self-educate and to think for himself. It could be said that, he learned to read and think and was not influenced by the boob-tube and costly programs of the educational experts that now three centuries later have become so dominate in education and which are in charge of  public school education!

Parenting has been greatly neglected in contemporary education, as the so-called experts have taken the reigns.  The Bible speaks to Christian parents in Colossians 2:8 where it says;  “See to it that no one takes you captive by philosophy and empty deceit, according to human tradition, according to the elemental spirits of the world, and not according to Christ,”  We have in our land forces that are very much antagonistic to the Christian message and the Christian world-view, as our schooling system has been the great breeding ground for this humanistic thinking.  The moral content has been reversed, it can be argued and even reversed by much of progressive thinking. Many young people who aspire to be educators most often drop out of teaching because of the excessive busy work required to teachers, who must conform to the dictates of the academic hierarchy.

I heard an interesting observation about schooling, as it seems that a teacher started off his class, and on the first test his students had a few “A”s, a greater number of “B”s, a good number of “C”s, a few “D”s and a good number of “F”s. There was a lot of complaining, for the students had all been getting good grades.  So the teacher agreed to average out all the grades and give each student the same grade.

So on the next test, the students had all “C”s, which made half the class more happy and the other more  unhappy with the results.  But it seems that in this process the former “A” students were studying less, as did the former “B” and on down.  The call to individual motivation was taken out and none achieved as high as before, even the “F” students were learning less.  The teacher then showed the students the results from the tests, and what this so-called stress in educational equality created—such as the “No child left behind.”

There has been so much stress of pulling up the low achieving students that we have great hindered those who wish to achieve much higher.   But the Corona virus is shaking up the playing field, as many children now are turning to home-schooling, as the public schools are not meeting.  “Social Isolation” means that schools are closed in so far as students attending classrooms together.  If students are going to be educated during this time, it is not going to be in a group setting, but basically individually in their homes, as home-schooling is set in motion.  There are many types of instruction and schooling that are in the process, and there are all kinds of home-schooling.  But it can well be said that the academic rat-race that has not been very successful over the past number of decades is now in set on hold. 

Today, around 50.8 million children are in public schools and 5.8 million in private schools, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. However, a 2019 survey by EdChoice showed that although eighty percent of U.S. students ordinarily attend a local district school, less than a third of their parents want them there. Parents were already looking for alternatives—the pandemic is merely accelerating the pace of change. Home-schooling is about 2.5 million, but it is growing rapidly.

Many are looking into the value of home-schooling especially during this Covid-19 crisis.  Christian parents generally have been greatly disappointed by the environment and subject material of much of the public schooling, and masses are turning to homeschooling. There are home-school programs that are to be ranked very high and excellent in preparation of college or career focus.  Home-schooling is not anti-intellectual. 

Kerry McDonnell also said, “Evidence shows that homeschoolers in the United States have performed quite well, regardless of their socioeconomic status: “There is no correlation between income or ethnicity with homeschooling children’s achievement scores – unlike other school environments. That’s because, in a home environment, children get some key ingredients in very high concentrations – one on one interaction, high levels of academic engagement and an overall less distracting environment.”  (WaPo Op-Ed: ‘Homeschooling’ During Corona-virus Crisis ‘Damaging’ to Children – by Dr. Susan Berry, Breitbart, March 30, 2020)                                                                                                                                 

Proverbs 2:3-5 says: “Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; If thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.” If students can achieve high standards in learning and not be subjected to the negative, secular, progressive philosophy dominant in the contemporary public schools, many parents are willing to go for it.  Home-schooling is legal and academically recognized in all the states.  Temporary homeschooling — or emergency homeschooling as some people call it, may be a good solution for the concerns that many have, but there are many concerns, especially now in the Covid-19 crisis!

In respect to the religious influence in the education of the children it has been observed: 

The Reformer John Calvin was a strong advocate for universal education, believing that   every   child should be trained in reading, writing, math, and grammar, as well as religion. Martin Luther taught that education was essential, “both to understand the Word of Scripture and the nature of the world in which the Word would take root.” The modern Sunday school movement   began in 1780 when Robert Raikes began educating poor children who were otherwise overlooked by society. Most universities, including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Oxford, and Cambridge, were founded by Christians as religious schools.

In the book of Proverbs, a son is exhorted to heed his father’s instruction, and the application of   he knowledge learned is called wisdom. The word education may not appear in the English   form in the Bible, but Scripture does say a lot about the process of education, and it begins with the parent and child. The command to parents is to nurture their children in the Lord, Ephesians 6:4 says:  ‘And, ye fathers, provoke not your children to wrath: but bring them up in the nurture and admonition of the Lord.’ and the Greek word, “paideia,” translated “nurture” in the KJV, carries with it the idea of training, education, instruction and discipline. (The Christian      Philosophy of Education   – Handbook of Christian Education, Bob Jones University Press)

Parenting and the family should be central in education of a child.  Proverbs 2:3-5 well speaks to this as it says:  “Yea, if thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for understanding; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchest for her as for hid treasures; Then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God.”

There is a universal fear of the Covid-19 virus, but if this factor could become an influence to draw our educational focus back to a respect for God and his ways, it could be a silver-lining in the clouds, and home-schooling could be one way where families are able to see their children educated without the destructive, leftist thinking of the progressive philosophies so dominant in our day.  Some schools are worse, and others are better than the negative factors this article has addressed.

The Covid-19 virus or Corona virus is very bad, and it throws a great obstacle to education. Bad things happen, but there is the promise of Romans 8:28 that, “We know that all things work together for good to them that love God, to them who are the called according to his purpose.”  It is possible that something so tragic and terrible as the Covid-19 virus could be a silver-lining in our culture in respect to the education of the youth in our society!