elementary
Recess to the Rescue Why playtime might be the most important time
A
merica’s future is figuratively on the line. After a year and a half of remote and hybrid learning, children across the United States have fallen desperately behind, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which estimates that the average American student has lost up to nine months of learning during the COVID-19 pandemic. And students of color fare even worse, it reports. That may not sound like much, but even a few months of learning loss could have a lifetime of impacts, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, an international policymaking
92 BACK TO SCHOOL | 2021
group that says education interruptions as a result of COVID-19 will have implications for students and nations alike. It estimates that students will earn nearly 10 percent less income over their lifetimes for every year of learning loss they experience. Because less knowledge translates to fewer skills and decreased innovation, every year of learning loss likewise will cost the U.S. economy trillions of dollars in gross domestic product annually through the end of the century. Against this backdrop, school systems are expected to spend billions of dollars on accelerated and auxiliary learning programs to address learning defecits. In
the rush to close academic gaps, however, there’s a risk that they might widen social-emotional gaps that also have formed. “A lot of parents and educators right now think our No. 1 job at school is to catch kids up. But what does that look like? More homework? More instruction? More time in seats listening to lectures? What I think will ‘catch kids up’ is less of all that,” says youth development researcher Rebecca London, associate professor of sociology at the University of California, Santa Cruz. “The pandemic has been traumatic for all of us, including children, so I think our first order of business needs to be healing from that collective trauma.” >
PLAYWORKS
BY MAT T ALDERTON
