Educating the Whole Child

This is part of a series of blog posts touching on learning during the coronavirus pandemic.

Raise your hand if you are worried about your child’s education now that schools have closed for the foreseeable future. Everyone? Ok. Now raise your hand if you are scared about the state of the economy, healthcare facilities, friends, loved ones, the world. Everyone again? This unprecedented time of uncertainty is not just an adult’s problem; your children are worried, too.

How easy is it to focus and think when your emotions are heightened? Not very. Your mind is focused on the source of stress and there is little room for other types of cognition. Numerous studies have shown that anxiety leads to loss of attention and impaired short-term memory. Attempts at formal education cannot be made until stress has been reduced.

But what if my child falls behind? The schools are setting up online work. My child has to do it… right? How am I supposed to teach my child everything when I’m also trying to work full-time from home? I’m not even qualified to teach my kid—I don’t remember high school physics!

Stop. Breathe. Learning academic content is not the sole goal of education. The goal of education is to produce well-adjusted, intelligent, adaptable adults. This is an opportunity to teach our children that life isn’t a high-speed chase, and that they can relax for a while even if—GASP!—other kids are still doing school work!

Life lessons like this are more valuable than learning academic content. Throughout my school years, I read a whole bunch of books that I don’t remember, wrote a bunch of essays that never taught me anything, and did a bunch of science experiments that were fun, but I can’t tell you how they worked. I’m not saying those things weren’t valuable. I know that the aggregate value of my education, then and now, consists of the intellectual richness afforded me by the environment I was fortunate enough to live in. To be honest, though, I don’t remember a heck of a lot about what I specifically “learned” in school.

But you know what I do remember? I remember the way that people around me reacted to 9/11. I remember the Columbine shootings and the Oklahoma City bombing. I remember the adults around me who had the good sense to remind me that things were ok, and that it was ok to mourn, not just the people who were lost, but the way of life we had been used to before these historic events. It has happened again, and it is time to grieve.

If you’re trying to make your kids keep up with school work for a sense of structure or work ethic, that’s great! But people are going to have a diverse set of reactions to these uncertain times and safety protocols that seem to change daily, so it is important to recognize that education encompasses the whole child, including the emotions that must be processed to gain resilience in the face of adversity. Remember that our kids are not watching Google Classroom, but us, to see what’s valuable and what’s not.

And when your children have had a chance to adjust to this new normal, and their brains are ready for traditional academics again, then know that you have an abundance of resources to help you through, including our online tutoring.