WASHINGTON – The virtual school is promoting isolation in children and stress in parents, according to a new study by the Center for Disease Control and Prevention. The results confirm previous research on the deleterious emotional and physical effects of keeping children out of school.
“Virtual education can present more risks than classroom teaching related to the mental and emotional health of children and parents,” said the researchers, adding that school systems and city governments will need to provide “support” to solve the growing problem.
The new coronavirus relief bill signed last week by President Biden includes almost $ 130 billion for schools; some of these funds will be used, by many districts, to deal with the effects of the pandemic on mental health.
Some doctors and public health experts have said that the emotional and cognitive effects of keeping schools closed are far greater than the danger of transmission within schools, which the CDC found does not occur, provided facial masks and other senses are worn. common measures taken. As schools remained closed in some parts of the country, these alarms became louder. “The consequences of social isolation and school disruption for children were devastating,” wrote pediatrician Hansa Bhargava last month, when many public school districts were approaching a year of totally or partially remote education.
The new study suggests that isolation and inactivity are the main culprits of this crisis. Published on Thursday by the CDC, the findings were based on a survey of parents whose children participated in face-to-face classes, took all classes via computer or participated in a so-called hybrid model that combines remote and face-to-face teaching. He found that, for both virtual and hybrid models, children were more isolated, spending less time with other children and outside of it. They also simply moved less. (The new study included children aged 5 to 12 years).
“These differences in physical activity are worrying,” wrote the researchers. They also noted that black students were more likely to engage in remote learning at about twice the rate of white students, meaning that they were more likely to experience the psychological effects of home learning than their white counterparts.
These findings can be worrisome especially for parents of adolescents, who need to exercise to maintain mental health. High school students in some parts of the country may be learning at home until spring, largely because of concerns that children’s apparent inability to contract or transmit the coronavirus will diminish with age. Some districts have been more willing to return elementary school students to the classroom before facing the more complex epidemiological and educational challenge that is high school.
Parents whose children attended remote school were twice as likely to tell CDC that their children were moving less (62.9% of respondents) than parents whose children returned to the classroom five days a week (30 , 3%). While 58 per cent of all-virtual parents said their children spend less time away from home, only 27.4 of all in-person parents said the same. (Parents’ experiences with students in a hybrid environment tend to fall somewhere between the two poles.)
Parents whose children participated in virtual or remote learning were more likely to report that they noticed a worsening in mental and emotional health (24.9 percent for remote parents, 15.9 percent for face-to-face parents). However, parents did not report markedly higher levels of anxiety and depression among children who attended totally or partially virtual schools. This could, however, only reflect the lack of diagnostic experience among the parents who responded to the survey.
The survey included 1,290 parents, 92% of whom had children in public schools. Forty-six percent of respondents had children in the virtual only school and 31 people had children attending school entirely in person, while another 23% had children in a hybrid environment. The survey was conducted throughout October and November, when a greater proportion of students were involved in distance learning than today.
About 20 percent of American students are still learning exclusively online, according to the Burbio data site.
The new study also described how the pandemic has increased parental responsibility and stress, with many fathers – mothers in particular – now having to reconcile work and school. In fact, parents of students in remote educational settings were more likely to say that they were concerned about losing their jobs (26.6 percent to 15.2 percent) or discovering the ever-changing puzzle that is the pandemic of daycare centers (13.5 percent to 6.8 percent) than they were parents with children personally.
And while only 38% of parents with students back in the classroom said they experienced high or moderate emotional distress, that share jumped to 54% for parents with children learning at home.
“Parents of children who receive virtual education more often reported their own emotional distress,” wrote the researchers, describing a litany of ills that these parents say they are suffering to a greater degree, including “difficulty sleeping, loss of work, concern about job stability, child care challenges and conflict between working and providing child care. “
It may take years for researchers to fully understand the effects of the pandemic on the social fabric. Some believe that children are resistant enough to withstand months of what has been called, with some scorn, “Zoom school”. It is not clear whether parents have this resilience, especially when the personal and professional stress of the pandemic is combined with the stress of distance learning.
Biden promised to open most schools during his first 100 days in office. Recalcitrant neighborhoods on the West Coast and Northeast are moving in this direction, but not quickly for some parents, who strongly urge the reopening of schools in some regions of the country.
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