Concern for kids? pandemic well-being prevails as the school year winds down for the second year in a row.
In Ontario, after parents spent the end of May wondering if and when children could be sent to in-person learning, they finally heard schools won?t re-open this school year.
After announcing home learning would continue to the end of the year, Nova Scotia reversed direction, so as of June 3, all students found themselves back in school.
These are the latest signs of how, over the past 15 pandemic months, Canada?s kindergarten to Grade 12 education system has been turned upside down.
School disruptions have exposed the fragility of the modern, centralized, bureaucratic education state, which I analyzed in my 2020 book, The State of the System. Parents, learning experts and pediatricians report that ?the kids are not all right.? There are real concerns about the ?snowball effect? of losses in literacy, skill development and the preparation of graduating students.
The pandemic education shock has raised five critical issues that demonstrate how student achievement and social well-being are far from mutually exclusive.
1. Myth of ?21st century? learning
The heavily promoted and much-anticipated age of ?21st century learning,? characterized by curricula touting broad, holistic learning and a emphasis on

technological skills rang hollow when students and teachers were struggling to master technology for continuous learning.
Thrust into the COVID-19 pandemic crisis, what eme...