The State of Things
In a recent essay entitled The Unbearable Bleakness of Schooling for Commentary magazine, Robert Pondiscio has written about the “psychic toll” the pandemic and its related restrictions have taken on children. Now that masking mandates have mostly dissipated, the world seems ready to convince itself that, so far as schooling is concerned, students will return to normal as soon as the world returns to normal. Such a thing is untrue, and the damage done is being misrepresented and minimized.
Pondiscio takes up an assortment of topics impacting the quality of public education, but he especially emphasizes the dreary consequences of public education’s tendency to highlight the bleakness of the world, the badness of everything and everyone that has come before, the inherent injustice of every institution, and the danger in everything. From all of this institutionalized despair, he writes, “strong evidence is emerging that we are mostly succeeding in creating a generation of overwhelmed young people paralyzed into learned helplessness.” Moreover, whatever challenges we faced prior to the pandemic were likely exacerbated by it because while adults mostly had to get on with things, children were more likely to be parked in front of screens with less supervision than before. “More screen time is also associated,” writes Pondiscio, “with fewer hours spent on sports and exercise, attending religious services, reading books, doing homework, and in-person social interactions, all of which correlate with lower rates of depression.”
This topic of depression and mental health may seem like a tired one, but it is nevertheless very real and is taking its toll not just on the students who are our primary concern, but on the teachers who feel an intellectual, ethical, and moral responsibility for them. As Pondiscio notes in his essay, “the American Academy of Pediatricians declared the state of child and adolescent mental health ‘a national emergency.’ Visits to hospital emergency rooms for suspected suicide attempts among adolescents grew by 31 percent in 2020 over the year before. In February and March of 2021, visits for suspected suicide attempts for girls ages 12-17 jumped 51 percent compared with the same time period in 2019 prior to Covid.”
It is not simply that the pandemic has left students intellectually or academically deprived, or socially stunted, or physically less adept or developed, but that all these factors combined, are exhausting faculty who cannot themselves emotionally process and address all these challenges simultaneously. As a result, many are leaving a profession they once believed they would remain wedded to for the duration of their working lives. They are leaving, it should be noted, not out of apathy, but because they cannot play the part of parent, therapist, spiritual counselor, teacher, coach, and friend to so many students without being utterly overwhelmed. This is not a state of things only at Ridgeview: the phenomenon exists worldwide.
All of this leads up to Pondiscio asking what school is for, but in an earlier reference to Yuval Levin’s essay, The Changing Face of Social Breakdown in The Dispatch, Levin has answered that question in a way that is familiar to Ridgeview families. School is intended to cultivate the soil within which human flourishing can grow. More important than getting children into college, or even to making them successful there, we should have the objective of ensuring that children grow into the kinds of adults who are capable of understanding and providing for their own happiness.
Levin cites ‘disordered passivity’ and an excessive and unprecedented risk aversion as factors that deform “parenting, education, work, leadership, and fellowship in our society.” Additionally, and frighteningly, the “internet has come to mediate different parts of our real-world experience (from dating to calling a taxi to getting food at a restaurant) in ways that have let more people live as functional loners, meeting their needs with a minimum of eye contact or interpersonal risk. And countless younger Americans dissipate their erotic energies in similar seemingly riskless substitutes for human contact.”
So far, so bad. As a parent, I am cognizant that none of this feels good to hear. It is nonetheless important, and it is equally important to understand what is being done on behalf of our students to combat this frankly dangerous gloominess.
While it would be pompous and misguided to believe that our demographic is impervious to these influences or that we are somehow exempt from what is plaguing the rest of the world, I do contend that there are some unique and remarkable things occurring at Ridgeview that mitigate these trends. I think it is as much in the spirit as it is in the content of what we are doing that is making the difference. With regards to spirit, I would cite curiosity, hope, optimism, courage, determination, and perseverance as the qualities that need our collective encouragement.
Our teachers are determined to present the triumphs as well as the failings of humanity in our curriculum. With regards to history, they do not elide over the uglier aspects, but neither do they paint such a grim portrait of mankind as to persuade students of the ultimate irredeemability of man. In art, literature, music, languages, philosophy, and civics, inspiration, if one is open to it, can still be found. Wonder can be entertained, curiosity intermittently whetted and sated, and the kindling of hope and optimism bellowed. The quiet student comforted and encouraged, emboldened to take risks, and all students fortified to endure the setbacks of public and private failings, to see that they are temporary, and to rise again with renewed energy and resolve.
We sit students down across from one another, propose a serious matter, and a civil discussion ensues. They talk to one another as fellows, not as inhuman antagonists pounding out socially inept messages through the pretended anonymity of the internet. They ask one another to dances, they navigate the hallways, they hold student meetings, play on the playground—all imperfectly, but all in person.
When I reflect on the behavior, disposition, demeanor of students at athletic events, school meetings, mock trial, outdoor trips, madrigals, concerts, science bowl, and the robotics competition, or the conversations about senior theses, or moral philosophy, or any number of other casual asides, I do not merely witness curiosity, hope, optimism, courage, determination, and perseverance, I see good cause to believe that they, rather than some governmental or bureaucratic intervention, are the source of our children’s salvation.
I would add just one thing to this: patience. Theirs and ours. The path forward will not be without its hardships, but the preparation of human beings for an everchanging world has never been without hardship. What is unprecedented to us is not unprecedented to history. Aside from taking stock of our current predicament, there is much of value in human history to provide us with guidance, hope, and inspiration. We need to be certain that we are passing this along to our children before sending them into the wilderness.
D. Anderson
Headmaster
