What We’ve Stolen From Our Kids

School provides so much more than an education

In May, twin girls Alma and Clil, and their mother, Anna Michel, wear protective face masks as they await their turn to enter the elementary school where the girls study, in Jerusalem, Israel. Photo: David Vaaknin / The Washington Post / Getty

By ​Chavi Eve Karkowsky

In the beginning, the pandemic was a child-care crisis. School was closing today, and then maybe tomorrow. Who would leave work to get the children? Who had to cancel everything? Then it was clear that there wasn’t going to be school, for a week, maybe two, then a month, then the rest of the school year. And then a little while after that, it became clear that in-person summer camp was out too.

And now here we are, staring at September and realizing how much we have taken from our children. Because this pandemic is not just a child-care crisis. At some point, this experience is our children’s actual lives, and they’ve lost something enormous. From the perspective of the kids, the pandemic has meant the profound and abrupt loss of school.

I am the mom of four school-age kids, and I’m also a doctor in New York City, on the front lines of COVID-19 response. March, April, and May were not just abnormal; they were really, really scary. My family made plans, and backup plans: What if I get sick? What if both adults get sick? What if a kid needs to be hospitalized? What if both adults need to be hospitalized? All our plans were bad.