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I would really like to see the nation's colleges and high schools developing plans for distance/home-based education of students if this particular emergency develops.

I am reminded of a study my father showed me some years ago. Back in the 60's, the Minneapolis or Saint Paul school districts went on strike for a whole year. A significant body of students missed a whole year of school. The study was done to determine the "damage to learning" done by missing a year of public education. When the comparisson was done between the students who attended school and the students who missed a year, it was determined that the students who missed a year had no measurable losses.

That doesn't really surprise me very much. The school day and the school year are both too long. Although it is known that children learn better if they have more play time, more art, and more music, the school day is structured to start early (before teenagers, especially, are really physiologically awake) and to last until mid-afternoon. Recess has been taken away from many elementary schools; even teenagers don't get the breaks their brains need in between bouts of sustained concentration and learning. Foreign language is taught in the later grades, after the developing brain's "window" for effective language learning has long closed (somewhere around age 12.)

The nine-months-in-three-months-out schedule might as well have been designed for maximum boredom followed by maximum regression. Kids tend to be packed together by age group rather than by ability, forcing brighter kids in each subject to accomodate the pace tolerated by the duller children, who get resentful in their turn and often turn away from academics when perhaps it was nothing more than a simple matter of different maturity, not different ability, holding them back. We could get into how the NEA protects incompetent teachers and bad textbooks, but you know all that.

By twelth grade, many students have learned little more than how to brownnose and simulate a good performance. They've learned next to nothing about life's challenges or what college will demand of them. And they don't know their own limitations and strengths--because they've never had to confront their limitations (might cause self-esteem problems) nor have they had their strengths challenged. It's a wonder, in fact, that public schooling produces anyone capable of becoming educated.

It will be interesting, if the worst happens, to see how families rise to the challenge of being thrown back on their own resources.

am reminded of a study my father showed me some years ago. "Back in the 60's, the Minneapolis or Saint Paul school districts went on strike for a whole year. A significant body of students missed a whole year of school. The study was done to determine the "damage to learning" done by missing a year of public education. When the comparisson was done between the students who attended school and the students who missed a year, it was determined that the students who missed a year had no measurable losses."

I'm sure this is true. When we began homeschooling our older two, the second one skipped sixth grade. Never could figure out what she supposedly missed. :)

Younger children just learning basic skills would have a problem, and so would high school students who would be expected to take courses like chemistry, calculus, etc.

A year to the rest of the student population is NOT a problem.