Experts predict improvement in literacy and factual knowledge among students who are outside school classrooms and learning at home with grandparents who were themselves educated when schools taught "the 3 R's".
"We used to sit in rows as a matter of course," says one Grandma, "with desks at any spacing the teacher said they would be. We walked down hallways in lines, too. Not forming an unruly mob, shouting in each others' faces … I daresay there was a lot less spreading of germs back then."
"We used pens and paper and read books with pages that you turned," adds her teaching partner, Grandpa.
"We can't wait to tell our grandchildren that penmanship exists."
They are not alone; this new breed of grand-teachers is changing the face of Education. In what ways, exactly?
"We read books!" says one Granny who sits in a rocking chair reading aloud from ancient legends and modern poems. The kids at her feet sit mesmerized. "We memorize verse," she says. "What you memorize at age ten will be with you at age 80. I call it our EFL class (English as a First Language)."
"And we do arithmetic," says Grandad. "We count back coins for practice." (What are coins, asked one grandson?)
Another Grandad was once a naval engineer. "We re-enact great sea battles in the backyard," he says. "Even the pre-schoolers. We plot them on paper-boards."
"All hands on board-books!" says Granny.
And for these home-schoolers, it's all hands off cellphones, ipods, laptops.
Another great-grand-step-parent favours Outdoor Ed. "I give the kids out-of-home-work," she elaborates. "I send them to local parks to bring back a feather, a deciduous leaf, a piece of lichen, an acorn. Next week we'll start an ant farm."
It's good for physical distancing, to be outdoors, one assumes.
"Yes," she says, "and we language-distance too, from words like 'misgendering', 'woke', 'identity' and 'marginalize'.
(Here, safest is "no comment".)
"It's not only the plague of COVID we're getting away from."
Promises to be interesting, the educational "new normal".
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(See also: How toys have changed:
and: How Books Are Still Magic:
