Will closing schools affect children? | Integrated Learning Therapy

I was alerted to an insightful article written by Ron Crawford of the Productivity Commission in New Zealand. Here is a summary of the contents:

As a social worker, Ron writes that the extended time spent at home might not be good for all children. This is especially true for those living in households where there is limited material and educational resources on hand, little motivation to encourage learning or few opportunities for uninterrupted study.

For a proportion of children, the risks of mental and physical harm have increased. Lockdown gave at-risk children few or no opportunities to escape from the pressures of a damaging home environment. Schools typically provide their only haven – with caring teachers on hand to monitor their wellbeing.

Are there harms to a wider group of children from school closures? While there is mixed evidence, the answer on balance seems to be yes. There are grounds to believe that time lost during schools closing can be made up through support for learning at home and ‘catch-up’ once schools open again. But not all learners will fare well. In the United States, studies show that typically learners’ skills and knowledge fall over the long, three month’s summer break and the losses are worse for children from poorer families. In New Zealand, missing days at school is unsurprisingly associated with lower achievement.

The effects of school closures on children’s wellbeing was one of the things that the New Zealand Government looked at closely in deciding that schools would open fully as soon as possible.

Also of importance is the ability of people to earn an income, which many mothers cannot do when forced to stay at home to care for and try to school their children. Being able to earn is pretty important for kids’ wellbeing too.

So, to summarise his main points:

School closures heighten the risk of mental and physical harm to possibly the most vulnerable children
Closures (even of relatively short duration) increases the risk of educational failure for a wider group of children in less well-off communities
Many families are well-placed with the help of schools to support their children to keep learning during closures
While schools’ main role is to promote learning they also benefit families by freeing parents to work. This is an important benefit of reopening schools.

Many children in South Africa may be struggling in this time of extended school shutdown. Learning difficulties may be going unrecognized and with no support to correct the causes of learning challenges, children will fall even further behind. If you suspect your child is avoiding learning while at home (or at school) or struggling to keep up with the prescribed work, don’t delay in seeking help to address the possible reasons – at least the shutdown of schools gives you and your child time to work on overturning “I can’t” to “I can”, and “I won’t” to “I will”.

← Previous Next →

Martin Doherty, writing for The Conversation, says that at the age of about four, children reach important milestones in brain development.

One of these is a huge improvement in understanding others’ thoughts and feelings. This is the start of empathy. Another is in spatial thinking—understanding how objects are positioned and related. This is the beginning of the ability to read maps.

Martin and his colleague, Catherine Sayer, conducted a study with 175 two to five-year-olds to explore how children are able to use scale models to figure out where something is in the real world. At about four, children are able to use a scale model of a room to work out where something is. We thought that this might result from children’s understanding of how one thing can represent something else. But we actually found that four-year-olds’ ability to use scale models came from their spatial abilities.

At the same age, children start to understand that someone’s behaviour is due to what that person believes, not necessarily what is really the case. This has interesting consequences.

If you’ve played hide-and-seek with young children, you may have noticed that they aren’t always very good at it. They love the ritual of looking in all the wrong places first, but beforehand they may tell you where they are going to hide, hide in the same place every time, or not be especially hidden.

After their fourth birthday, they get much better at hide and seek. They understand that the seeker looks in the wrong places because they don’t know where the hider is.

At about three to four children also start to tell lies. They realize they can make someone believe something that isn’t true.

Understanding symbols

Martin’s earlier research with fellow psychologist Josef Perner suggests that four-year-olds don’t just start to understand how others’ minds work. Figuring this out is part of the development of an understanding of “representation”—that symbols, like thoughts, words, or pictures, can be used to stand for something else.

Children start to think about how words relate to objects. This means, for instance, knowing that “animal” can refer to something you already have a name for, such as “rabbit”. This might help children learn the new word.

Their ability to use a understand the components of pictures also improves around this age. Very young children use a lot of trial and error to complete a jigsaw, picking up random pieces to see if they fit. By the time they are about four years old, they start to use the picture as a guide, trying to connect lines and match bits of colour, while checking the guide picture on the box lid.

Developmental experiments

Another ability children develop at around four is using scale models. A classic set of developmental experiments involved a model of a regular household room. The real room had typical furniture—sofa, table, cupboard and so on—and the model had miniature versions laid out in the same way.

Children were shown where something was hidden in the model and told to find an object hidden in “the same place” in the room. Children of around four can find the object using the identical layouts. If shown a sticker under a particular chair in the model room, for example, they can go straight to the “same” chair in the other room. This is the fundamental understanding required to read maps.

Adults see scale models and maps as representations. Maps represent a town or a country. A scale model of, say, the Eiffel Tower represents the real thing. At first, Martin suspected children’s ability to use scale models is more evidence of understanding representation at this age.

He was wrong. Instead, the researchers found that this ability is based on a development in children’s spatial abilities that also occurs at about four. This is the ability to think about spaces and where objects are within them. Spatial abilities help with maths skills, and good spatial ability is linked to an interest in science, technology, engineering and mathematics.

Their experiment was simple. They compared the model room task with a test of understanding how representation works. The two abilities develop around the same age, but they found they were not related. Children who could do one task couldn’t necessarily do the other.

They also had a test of purely spatial ability. Children who passed the model room task also passed the spatial task. So it looks like the model room task relied on children‘s spatial thinking.

They don’t yet know why two important but apparently unrelated abilities arise at the same time. Perhaps it’s related to changes in the growing brain at this interesting age.

Provided by The Conversation.

Image supplied by Freepik.