Education in the Time of Covid19

 I've turned to Facebook recently, with long posts on current events, and it strikes me that I may not always have Facebook to record those things. I should start posting such musings here, as well as getting back to my regular book reviews. 

So, today, some musings on education in a pandemic: 

On 9/11/01 I was in class writing notes to Nina and Venus in Elvish. We had been reading The Hobbit. Someone knocked on the door and told the teacher what happened. He came back in. He told us. He turned on the television. The rest of the day is a blur to me, but I know I spent a large chunk of the day in the music room with the other band and theater geeks, watching the news. The curriculum was put on hold because tragic history was unfolding before our eyes. We watched as over 2,000 people died.

We didn't fully return to math tests and The Hobbit for a few days afterward, because it wasn't possible. We spent class time talking about what had happened, what was still unfolding. The world was different. We were different. We were learning, but we were learning other things. We were learning about heroes, we were learning about mortality, we were learning about the importance of each breath.

So far, 160,000 people have died of Covid19 in America. People are dying today of Covid19. This minute, as I write this. And our children are around us, learning. They are learning about how we can respect others through the use of a mask, they are learning about how important it is to savor the hugs we can get, and they are learning that they are resilient, and can survive heartbreak and loss.

I know you want your children's education to continue, and I know parents need to be able to work and having public schools open is a huge part of that. But you can't look at the world today and think that we can make it look like the world one year ago. It isn't the same world. And learning doesn't happen in the same way in this world as it did in the world of 2019. We can't just go back. There is no going back. There is no perfect solution, only the solutions that will allow us to survive.

We have to stop seeking the world that was, and focus our energy on surviving in the world that is.