Pandemic Learning Loss Is Real. Schools Must Follow The Science To Make Up For It Article Analysis

As millions of students are set to return back to the classrooms for the third school year affected by COVID-19, many parents and educators alike are worried about the learning loss caused by the COVID-19 pandemic. Doug Lemov of the Los Angeles Times addresses the way schools need to tackle this issue, the pandemic as created in his op-ed titled “Pandemic learning loss is real. Schools must follow the science to make up for it.”. Doug Lemov uses many different forms of rhetorical strategies within his article, such as appeals to ethos, pathos, and logos, with appeals to logos dominating throughout the article. By using these varying forms of rhetorical appeals throughout his article, Lemov is able to effectively showcase how educators can restructure their teaching habits in order to tackle this issue but is unable to persuade his readers that these changes are the best course of action. 

Lemov first sets up the argument with an appeal to logos, highlighting the effects that the pandemic has had on students “  One prominent study found that the average student had fallen five months behind in math and four months in reading by the end of the school year. But those numbers also hide inequalities; for low-income schools, the number for math is seven months.” (Lemov 1) The author tries to earn the audience’s trust by utilizing this study, but in the end, it fails to have this effect. Throughout the article, there is no mention of when, where, or who conducted the study. While Lemov uses this information to help highlight the indifference the pandemic has created, by not listing any other information about the statistic, it is unable to convince the reader that it is valid and relevant to the topic. 

Lemov continues the argument with more appeals to logos. He then presents the main part of his solution, stating that teachers should first be more focused on students’ long-term information retention, rather than focusing on short-term information retention.  Lemov then quotes cognitive scientists to help support his claim, with them stating“building memory is the aim of all instruction, and that if nothing has changed in long-term memory, nothing has been learned.”. (Lemov 1) While bringing up the arguments of different cognitive scientists does highlight why long term information retention is important in education. What the quotes fail to showcase is how this approach is beneficial for students whose learning was affected by the pandemic. Lemov's use of logos supports the different ways educators can restructure their teaching habits, but it does little to show why these changes would be the best course of action for educators to take. These multiple appeals to logos also fail to highlight why/if these changes would benefit students in the first place. 

Lemov’s next use of rhetorical strategies are appeals to pathos. In the second part of his argument, Lemov states that educators need to be more considerate about the emotional needs of the students returning back into the classroom. “Only peers can provide this sense of belonging, but teachers can foster the environment as a social norm,” Lemov argues that educators need to have students interact more with each other because only then will students be able to associate the classroom and learning as a whole, in a positive light. The authors use the appeal to pathos as a way to highlight that educators need to care both about students' academic performance as well as their emotional development as well. While the use of pathos supports ways an educator can restructure their classroom, it provides very little explanation as to how this would help students who have fallen behind due to the pandemic. 

In the op-ed article titled “Pandemic learning loss is real. Schools must follow the science to make up for it.” the author Doug Lemov used rhetorical strategies, such as ethos, pathos, and logos to help showcase that educators can not simply ignore the ever-present learning gap the pandemic has created. With the use of these strategies, Lemov has highlighted different ways educators could restructure their classrooms and the reasoning behind each suggestion. What Lemov fails to do is explain why these suggestions are beneficial for students affected by the learning gap. Lemov used rhetorical strategies to support the changes that can be made to the classrooms but failed to present if these changes are needed in the first place and how these changes would benefit students.