“What would my grandfather think of all this?”
That’s the question I found myself asking recently. My daughter had just told me, midday on a Tuesday, that she’d already completed her entire week’s work. Her twin brother, meanwhile, doesn’t see the point in doing work, because the school system announced nothing he does now counts towards his final grade. He has a point.
And then there is their older sister. Way back in February, which feels like it was seven years ago, she got an A+ on her clay model of a cell. Today she is a kind of recluse, clinging to her room, keeping night-shift hours. The world she knew was ripped away, only to be replaced by a new one of desperate social interaction amidst the lockdown. She is mad, she is defiant and upset. On her phone, we find invitations to join a smartphone app called House Party as late as 3:50 a.m. The other night, my wife found her in the kitchen at 2:30 a.m. eating a bowl of macaroni and cheese.
There is a reason she is behaving this way. She is a teenager. Socially, she is in that difficult twilight between childhood and adulthood. Biologically, her brain is in a period of profound growth — it hasn’t generated grey matter at this clip since she was a baby. Brains are energy hogs. So she is feeding it what it needs to grow, calories.
But calories are not the only thing that a growing brain needs. It requires stimulation. Facts. Arguments. Stories. Debate. She needs to learn, in other words. All those new brain cells are like an empty jug that needs to be filled.
Once upon a time, school filled that jug. There were French tests, lab experiments, vocab tests, history and math tests. All of that’s gone. Now she, along with her brother and sister, are participating in remote learning — which is a polite way of saying hardly any learning.
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See Also:
(1) Ontario extends state of emergency by four weeks
(2) Hundreds of positive COVID-19 tests not reported to Ontario public health units
(3) How Lethal Is COVID-19 For The Healthy? Military Ships Offer Case Study
(4) Another LTC probe but changing the system is up to you
(5) Downtown Toronto stores board up windows for fear of looting
