Using a problem to solve another problem
The pressure to send children back to school despite the continuing rise of COVID-19 in the population has created an increasingly negative response from parents, educators and even from children themselves. Articles have been written by numerous young people expressing their opinions on the issue.
Some have expressed a feeling of relief at being relieved of the pressure of the school day. Remote learning has been praised as allowing for learning in accordance with individual needs. The tradeoff between classroom and remote learning seems worth it in terms of the benefits some feel.
One young man writes of being a low-income student with limited access to computers and the internet faced with challenges trying to study and keep up with school work in cramped quarters he shares with his parents and siblings. Despite these obstacles, having lost two family members to the virus he would choose to work under those conditions than risk his own and his family’s health.
Mothers have also written telling of their children seeming less anxious and actually learning better remotely despite the added pressure on the parents having the children restrained at home. These comments seem to match the fact that the call for universal standards for achievement in basic subjects has also led to criticism that the pressure for academic achievement has led to a constricted education that does not serve well either young people or society. The “race to the top” has become literally a race, in which the prize for the winners, acceptance to elite schools and economic success are the goals of parents and therefore of their children.
Much has been written about how the contemporary focus on science, math and technology has been at the expense of the humanities and a liberal arts education. The criticism has been made that students are pressured to take practical courses such as computer science in order to aim for lucrative careers in finance or law. The opportunity for self- discovery through a liberal arts education no longer exists and many high achieving students are left with feelings of aimlessness and emptiness. Students have been taught that all education is about doing your homework, getting the answers and acing the test.
These criticisms and some of the reactions of parents and young people to the current crisis in education, has led me to think of a psychiatrist friend who said the thing to do with a problem is use it to solve another problem. The problem here is that young people are trained to think exclusively in terms of the next immediate goal, which prevents them exploring other possibilities - thinking out of the box as it were, doing what they would choose to do even if they didn’t get rewarded for it. Purposeful work is spread out all along the income distribution, the goal being finding meaning in your work.
Perhaps the problem posed for education during this interruption of traditional modes of teaching and learning can be used as an opportunity for students to explore their own avenues of interest instead of the usual curriculum. Many successful leaders and achievers in various fields have written about leaving school to follow their passions, which seemed to have been aimless at the time. This road can be challenging as it may entail going against the wishes of parents and other adult authority figures and the need to take risks in following an uncharted course.
Economic uncertainty plays a role as parents hope for a secure future for their children. Yet, parents have a role in rethinking and changing the goals for their own children.
Elaine Heffner, LCSW, Ed.D., has written for Parents Magazine, Fox.com, Redbook, Disney online and PBS Parents, as well as other publications. She has appeared on PBS, ABC, Fox TV and other networks. Dr. Heffner is the author of “Goodenoughmothering: The Best of the Blog,” as well as “Mothering: The Emotional Experience of Motherhood after Freud and Feminism.” She is a psychotherapist and parent educator in private practice, as well as a senior lecturer of education in psychiatry at Weill Cornell Medical College.
Dr. Heffner was a co-founder and served as director of the Nursery School Treatment Center at Payne Whitney Clinic, New York Hospital. And she blogs at goodenoughmothering.com.