“Educators” are bemoaning how “far behind” children are academically because of the pandemic. It’s the latest silliness as our society continues to believe that it must turn out masses of technocratic robots to keep industry and capitalism working.
The teaching of reading, writing, and arithmetic has always been less important than socialization of children into groups. Not to mention the acclimatization of children into industrialized work habits.
The wealthy have always known this, of course. Children were sent to private or boarding schools -_and are still targeted into elite colleges _ less to learn artisan skills than to meet the right people. And, truthfully, less to even meet the right people than to find out how to get along with them and bond into the upper levels of society.
Beyond that, it seems we are rapidly heading into a deskilled, post literate world. Automation does all the skilled work. Computers read, right, translate, and analyze. Nobody needs to do that stuff anymore. Just listen and talk and get along with others.
Western ideal for a long time has been to enable everyone to live like the upper class classic Greeks, free of chores, just thinking, discussing, and enjoying all the time (when they were not fighting each other). If civilization holds, that scenario seems likely. In a post-apocalyptic world, social skills would still be the best tools, as they have been for the last hundred thousand years or so.
The kids will be fine. The teachers _ not so much.
HuntingtonHarborThoughts 