A new story from the New Yorker shows how the media under-reported the plight of vulnerable kids and unwittingly helped fan teachers’ fears that kids were COVID “super-spreaders”

 By Alexander Russo

On the surface, the recent New Yorker/ProPublica article by Alec MacGillis focuses much-needed attention on the plight of vulnerable kids who have been so poorly served during the prolonged school lockout euphemistically called “remote learning.”

The Students Left Behind by Remote Learning details the dismal reality of a 12-year-old Baltimore kid named Shemar last spring and more recently.

The New York Times called it “beautiful and important.” Brown University economist Emily Oster described it as “completely heartbreaking.”

Beneath the surface, however, the piece also functions as a powerful critique of media coverage of the pandemic, an examination of how journalism seems to have unwittingly contributed to the neglect of kids like Shemar rather than a persistent voice calling for society to come to their aid.

In some of the most low-infection areas of the country, predominantly white, college-educated teachers have refused to leave their homes and go back into schools. A major justification for their reluctance has been safety concerns, many of which have been amplified by the media and some of which increasingly seem to have been exaggerated.

At the same time, millions of vulnerable, economically disadvantaged children like Shemar have suffered at home, their plight addressed only intermittently, their experiences often pushed to the side by the clamor of others’ concerns.

The piece is an examination of how media coverage seems to have unwittingly contributed to the neglect of kids like Shemar, rather than a persistent voice calling for society to come to their aid.

 

MacGillis’ reporting is exquisite and his storytelling is devastating.

The depiction of Shemar’s home life is excruciating to read. Twelve years old, he was already chronically out of school before the shutdown, in part due to a home situation that includes a mother who suffers from drug addiction and moves frequently.

He has a smartphone but no data plan, an Xbox but no computer. He has WiFi at his grandmother’s house but not at his mother’s. When she tries to secure free internet that has been promised to Baltimore families, she’s told it’s not available. MacGillis’ description of that experience is telling:

“It was a familiar situation for her: so often, when she made an effort on her son’s behalf, it foundered quickly in a bureaucratic dead end.”

When she can’t find her phone, she uses her son’s. He eats Nutella for dinner. He’s surprised not to have to repeat 6th grade. At a certain point in the lockdown, he talks about in-person school in the past tense.

Things aren’t all that stable at the school, either. The district’s initial remote learning efforts are woefully inadequate, handing out packets and snacks at first. Live instruction with a teacher is limited to just four hours per week.

At home and from school, there’s no one making the necessary effort to make sure that Shemar is logging in or doing his assignments. Efforts to keep him engaged are cursory and insufficient.

At home and from school, there’s no one making the necessary effort to make sure that Shemar is logging in or doing his assignments. Efforts to keep him engaged are cursory and insufficient.

Hidden beneath the harrowing narrative, MacGillis reveals what a corrosive role media coverage has played in fanning teachers’ fears and keeping kids and teachers away from school.

In the middle of the summer, when districts like Baltimore were contemplating a return to in-person schooling for at least some students who want and need it, a flawed study from Korea turned into a viral New York Times story that, according to MacGillis, changed everything.

“Some researchers immediately found problems with the study’s conclusions, pointing out that the sample of children who had become sick was exceedingly small.” But it was to no avail. As one expert observed, “the headline took off.”

By the end of the month, Baltimore announced that it would not offer an in-person option, citing among other things staff discomfort. The vast majority of districts in Maryland would soon follow suit, despite a relatively low infection rate. Most of the biggest districts in the country would do the same.

There’s no way to determine how big a role media coverage played. My own view is that resistance was already strong and would have continued to grow in some form even without the viral coverage or the White House push that gave cover to much reopening opposition.

But flawed media coverage comes up repeatedly in MacGillis’ interviews with teachers and union heads. Shemar’s 4th-grade teacher, Karen Ngosso, describes kids as COVID “supercarriers.” American Federation of Teachers head Randi Weingarten cites questionable coverage, too. No doubt it played a role.

Flawed media coverage comes up repeatedly in MacGillis’ interviews with teachers and union heads. And no doubt it plays a role. 

Most of all, the piece serves as a vivid reminder of just how little we’ve read and heard about disengaged, ill-served kids like Shemar over the past seven months.

“MacGillis sheds a light on a crucial part of the school story that we’ve heard too little about,” notes a recent edition of the New York Times COVID schools newsletter.

The issue of invisibility comes up repeatedly in the piece.

“The voices we don’t hear are the ones who are shut up at home,” one education professor said. “We have no mechanism to hear from them. There are no polls of 6-year-olds.”

Several times, MacGillis returns to the theme:

“Society’s attention to [kids like Shemar] has always been spotty… Now they were behind closed doors, and so were we, with full license to turn inward. While we dutifully stayed home to flatten the curve, children like Shemar were invisible.”

Sometimes, it feels as if he is writing not only as an individual but also on behalf of all of us who might have turned inward during the shutdown.

“I checked on Shemar a couple of times during the spring, but, in hindsight, I was too willing to let the lockdown serve as an excuse to hunker down with my own kids.”

Perhaps I’m projecting, but there are some moments where it’s not entirely clear to me whether MacGillis is writing about society writ large or about journalism:

“Society’s attention to kids like Shemar has always been spotty, but they had at least been visible. With remote learning, they have become invisible—safe from COVID-19, perhaps, but adrift and alone in dark rooms.”

Sometimes, it feels as if MacGillis is writing not only as an individual but also on behalf of all of us who might have turned inward during the shutdown.

For many people, underlying social inequality and a deadly worldwide virus are the main culprits.

For others, the blame for the current situation lies squarely in the hands of the Trump administration, which urged a speedy reopening of schools despite high infection rates and lack of safety equipment.  Teachers union head Weingarten lays the blame squarely on “political bullshit” from the White House.

However, there were other choices than a prolonged school shutdown, and the White House isn’t alone in playing politics. MacGillis describes an “implicitly political dynamic” that may have been in play, and the way in which opposition to reopening was often couched in terms of protecting kids and communities. We were protecting them, but we weren’t providing them nearly enough.

For me, this story is a vivid reminder that at least some of the blame lies within journalism, for failing to provide a relentless focus on these kids’ plights and for contributing to the misinformation about the danger that they may generate.

Journalism is often the only voice for communities like the one Shemar lives in, which have experienced decades of systemic racism and social injustice. And yet, journalism helped delay the return of in-person schools with relentless, fear-infused coronavirus coverage and somehow allowed kids like Shemar to become nearly invisible, right under our noses.

How and why that could have happened I’m still not entirely sure. But I have the feeling that it will be something that journalism will have to reckon with in the weeks and months ahead.

Related commentary:  The disengaged kids missing from the New York Times’ remote learning coverage

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Alexander Russo

Alexander Russo

Alexander Russo is founder and editor of The Grade, an award-winning effort to help improve media coverage of education issues. He’s also a Spencer Education Journalism Fellowship winner and a book author. You can reach him at @alexanderrusso.

Visit their website at: https://the-grade.org/