One of the most devastating effects of the COVID-19 pandemic has been the debt it has created, a debt that we owe our kids that will be hard ever to pay back. In the past three years, much of what has occurred — school closings, lockdowns, remote learning — whether warranted or not, has had a profound academic and social effect on children, adolescents and young adults. We have an obligation to repay them.
The depressing data from the National Assessment of Education Progress demonstrates dramatic declines in reading and math scores in American grade schoolers, with students from poorer schools showing the worst declines, perpetuating an unequal two-tiered system. The quality of science education was not measured, but scientific illiteracy has been a persistent problem in American schools for decades. There is much science to be learned in the face of the pandemic, and this is a wide-ranging opportunity to improve the situation.
One way to do so is by constructing age-appropriate school curricula, taking what we have learned from COVID-19 and teaching schoolchildren about germs, hygiene, vaccines and immunity. Just as important, we must remove some of the fear of their environment that we have inculcated in them.
