To the editor:
In a July 1, 2020, news conference, the governor of North Carolina said, “My number one opening priority is classroom doors.” However, he remained indecisive with no action plan. Importantly, Dr. Mandy Cohen at the same news conference said, “The emerging scientific evidence is that going to school is less of a risk as we think about the potential spread of COVID-19”.
What are the benefits of resuming classroom instruction? Children experience a structured education by highly trained instructors who motivate/supervise students on a daily basis. African-American and Hispanic families have been especially set back by school closure since internet access does not substitute for the meaningful in-person teaching. Re-entering the classroom allows especially these students more potential for upward mobility to close the achievement gap. Shuttering schools may further widen the education achievement gap worsened by remote learning.
What are some proposed action plans the governor could implement to begin August classes? Personal Protective Equipment could be offered at each classroom doorway, i.e. face masks and hand sanitizer. Healthy students and teachers could proceed with brick and mortar classroom instruction. Those with underlying health problems could remain at home, teaching and learning remotely via internet. The school system should invest in more teachers rather than more brick and mortar by increasing baseline teacher salaries and hiring more teachers to decrease the number of students per classroom.
Schools should return to a classical curriculum of reading, writing, and arithmetic (the “3 R’s”), enabling future leadership in society, science and industry. Who can make a persuasive speech, if one cannot write a coherent paragraph? Who can perform critical scientific analysis and write valid results, if one doesn’t have a basic science education? Who can build highways, bridges, and buildings if one cannot perform mathematics/physics to understand structural endurance? What retail business can survive, if one cannot effectively advertise and calculate profits/losses? Aforementioned skills require mastery of 3 R’s, subjects which are being trespassed by ideology creeping into the education curriculum.
If the governor is an education advocate, he should unambiguously proceed to open schools this August.