Among the most pervasive arguments for reopening school buildings centers around student mental health. Here’s a quote from the initial guidance from the American Association of Pediatrics:
“COVID-19 Planning Considerations: Guidance for School Re-entry” stresses the fundamental role of schools in providing academic instruction, social and emotional skills, safety, nutrition, physical activity, and mental health therapy.
From the American Association of Pediatrics
Let’s set aside the fact that schools should be primarily focused on learning; in recent years, teachers have increasingly become ad hoc social workers in a stressed system. Children had been living through a mental health crisis before the Covid-19 pandemic began, and of course the stay-at-home orders have exacerbated this crisis – particularly for those students most acutely in need. The AAP guidance also notes, “Children and adolescents also have been placed at higher risk of morbidity and mortality from physical or sexual abuse, substance use, anxiety, depression, and suicidal ideation.”
But I think we need to reconsider why we ask schools to be the panacea to preventing abuse, substance use, and other home-caused mental health crises. Just as we have leaned on police departments to solve a much wider swath of social issues than they ought to be involved in, we have asked schools to solve problems that are bigger, more complex, and more varied than schools are really equipped to solve.
Opening school buildings should fundamentally be the outcome of a process that considers the reason for closure (a pandemic) and effective education of students.
As to mental health, even after acknowledging that the closure of school buildings increases mental health struggles – isolation, anxiety, depression – there are far more complex considerations we need to weigh if we want to make mental health a cornerstone of our decisions to reopen school buildings. Consider:
- When we envision reopening schools, we envision classrooms looking like they did in January or February of this year. What will the mental health effects be of welcoming students to classrooms that…
- enforce strict social distancing?
- enforce the wearing of masks?
- prohibit comforting from teachers? (no hugs for scared kindergartners or supportive pats on the shoulder.)
- require long hours in a single room (including lunches and “recesses”)?
- insist on non-interactive modes of education, basically sending our classrooms back to the 1950’s?
- When we reopen school buildings during a pandemic, the virus will spread. It’s accepted that children are often unable to understand that when their parents divorce, they aren’t the cause. How will kids’ mental health suffer when they think they are to blame for…
- bringing home the virus and getting their parents or grandparents sick?
- bringing the virus to school and getting their teacher or bus driver sick?
- passing the virus to a friend, who brings it home to their family?
- When we reopen school buildings, there will be a certain percentage of families who do not believe safety protocols are necessary. How will student mental health (especially anxiety) suffer when bullying takes the form of aggressively ignoring safety measures? (Imagine masks removed when the teacher turns their back, distancing measures ignored, students coughing on fellow students, etc.)
- Districts reopening school buildings have elaborate plans for reverting to distance learning in the case of a viral case in a classroom. How will mental health suffer when students, particularly young ones, move back and forth unpredictably from school buildings to virtual learning?
Mental health should be central in our thinking. As human beings, we should be considering each others’ mental health, and taking action to help those in crisis. Schools should be considering the mental health of the students, and of the teachers and staff who support them.
There are real mental health risks associated with keeping school buildings closed. There are also real mental health risks associated with opening school buildings while the pandemic rages on. We must consider them all.