The Side Effects of Education

As we think about how we will emerge from the pandemic, parents and teachers are wondering if there will be vaccines for under 16 year olds, and if so, if any families will be reluctant to have their children vaccinated.   Data from the US may not translate to Singapore, but researchers Jessica Saleska and Kristen Choi note that in the US concern about side effects…is one of the most common reasons people report for delaying or refusing vaccination. Even minor side effects, such as swelling and pain at injection sites, often deter people from vaccination.  Data from Pew Research reinforce this, suggesting that in the US, fear of side effects is…the most common reported reason for potential refusal.  Now the side effects are real (data from Pfizer, for example, shows mild headaches, fatigue, fever and so on – see slides 23,24), but it’s ironic that they are cause of concern, because medically, side effects often signal reactogenicity – which is to say, they are the signs that an immune response is underway; that the vaccine is actually having the intended effect (just to be clear – no side effects does not mean the vaccine is not working).

Generalising from this point about side-effects takes us to the trade-off between short-term pain and long-term gain.  It’s a very familiar educational tension that we know we often have to help our children navigate, and getting it right is a big part of parenting and teaching.   There is, however, a less-well appreciated problem about the flip-side here; the trade-off between short-term gain and long-term pain.  This may not sound like a problem – after all, if we can have the benefit now and push off any side-effects for later, why wouldn’t we?

The answer is that it all depends on the size of the long-term pain and no-one writes about this better than Yong Zhao, Professor of Education in Kansas, who extends the medical analogy as he quotes the warning on a bottle of over-the counter pain relief: Ibuprofen may cause a severe allergic reaction…[including] stomach bleeding .  So even if it alleviates aches and pains in the short term, it can, for some individuals, be very dangerous.  And because the long-term problems can be so serious, it’s mandatory to publish details of the side effects – we expect such disclosures as the consequences of getting this wrong are significant.   No big news there – but Zhao points out that it is unlikely that anyone has received warnings like these about educational products, where the long-term damage can also be very significant,and he notes some educational examples that are striking by their absence:

• This program helps improve students’ reading, but it may make them hate reading forever.
• This practice can help children succeed academically but it may make them less creative.
• This rigidity of this approach to learning will command obedience, but may leave children unable to study effectively when required to do so independently.

Now, reasonable people can differ here  – different parents and different schools will place different weights on test scores, love of reading, citizenship, creativity, discipline and independence.  Fair enough.  But Zhao’s analysis does raise the interesting point that we rarely think in terms of unwanted side-effects; we tend to focus on what we want  in the short term.  Alas that often translates to what we can easily  – and often  inaccurately  – measure in the short term.  But of course damage caused by education may take a long time to be observed or felt – quite unlike most negative reactions to medicine.

Now short-term and long-term outcomes are both important (and likely feed into each other, so may not be quite as distinct as they seem).   But remembering that the point of school is not just to score well at school, but also to support coming decades after school, I’ll leave the last word to author Kylene Beers: If we teach a child to read, but kill the desire to read, we will have created a skilled non-reader, a literate illiterate.  No high test score will ever undo that damage.