Public Education Pandemic Pandemonium
Understanding the impact of pandemic-related consequences to the public education system is still a process in motion. I believe there is a real danger that this vital institution has been undermined to the point where it can no longer serve its necessary function, the shaping of citizens capable of critical thinking.
Advocates of testing as a measure of success say most students were about four to five months behind where they should have been in math and reading.
Champions of educational equity are concerned by data showing students from historically disadvantaged backgrounds are now estimated to be a full year behind those attending majority-white schools.
Disruptions in the education process have led to measurable increases of emotional distress, disengagement, depression, anxiety and loneliness in student populations. Behavioral problems in classroom settings are connected to the homelife impacts of isolation and illness/death by caregivers.
Those who would challenge most of the notions connected with public health measures under the banners of “choice” or conspiratorial claims have targeted school boards and administrators for intimidation, claiming (incorrectly) that they represented majoritarian points of view on vaccinations, social distancing, and masking.
(At this point in time an increasing number of Americans are weary of pandemic restrictions, but this was not the case during the period when most of these school board disruptions were taking place.)
Worshipers of the free market deity, as in the people who advocated for minimal public health measures during the pandemic, made keeping schools open a priority as society grappled with what should be done to protect vulnerable people.
The justification for this was data showing lower rates of infection for kids. As schools transitioned to remote learning and back again there was (and is) a chorus of complaints aimed at teacher unions as the bad guys.
Unions hold that schools represent an unsafe work environment for their members and the students they teach. Many school districts attempted to bypass collective bargaining agreements requiring consultation as they formulated their pandemic response plans.
Added up, all these issues point to systems already stressed out encountering unforeseen challenges and all-too-often falling short.
Teachers, meanwhile, are voting with their feet. About 55% say because of the pandemic they’re considering leaving their jobs sooner than they’d planned, according to a poll from the National Education Association, the nation’s largest teachers union. The Labor Department reports an estimated 143,000 workers in the education sector quit their jobs in December.
About 90% of NEA members reported burn out being “a serious problem,” with 91% saying “pandemic-related stress is a serious problem.” Those surveyed highly supported raising salaries, providing mental health support for students, hiring more teachers and staff, and less paperwork as solutions.
All this stress about working conditions is just part of the problem. The right wing’s focus on restricting educational content through book bans, limits on teaching about history, and animus toward LGBTQ students aren’t making their jobs any easier.
As Randi Weingarten, president of the American Federation of Teachers, said recently. “Why would someone walk into a profession where every single day one political party is at war with them about whether they're teaching honest history, about whether or not you should keep them safe, about whether or not they care about children?” she said.
Thomas Ultican, whose observations about education are a critical part of my informational diet, puts it well:
This spring, the attack on public schools took a dark and violent turn. School board members were being screamed at and threatened because they were requiring students to wear masks. The accusations grew in scope to include the supposed teaching of critical race theory (CRT) and supplying children with inappropriate books like “Ruby Bridges Goes to School: My True Story”.
Oddly, most teachers did not have a clue about what CRT was because it is seldom addressed outside of Law School graduate seminars.
Last month State Representative Christine Palm and former Assistant US Attorney, Frank Hanley Santoro wrote in the CT Insider,
“Clearly, something is afoot. Why is this happening suddenly and simultaneously in so many different places around the state (and indeed the country)? Why is the pattern so similar? … Why pick on CRT, which schools don’t even teach …? This doesn’t sound like something that just happened to occur to parents at a local bake sale.”
“The explanation may lie with Steve Bannon. According to Bannon, ‘This is the Tea Party to the 10th power,’ and ‘The path to save the nation is very simple. It’s going to go through the school boards.”
I’m not sure why people have a hard time grasping that what’s going on with the right amounts to a war on the very concept of public education. They come right out and say it, as the former President did in his 2020 State of the Union address, “no parent should be forced to send their child to a failing government school."
The term “government school” is meant to be a pejorative description to public education, implying somehow that a behemoth central bureaucracy is working toward corrupting the minds of children.
The reality, of course, is that our public education system is mostly decentralized. In San Diego County alone, there are more than 30 school districts, with trustees who set policy for their schools. As anybody who has actively engaged with these parts of government will tell you, it’s a chaotic and often frustrating system. And it’s also –and this is the point– a fundamental part of our democracy dependent on people being able to listen to each other and live with compromise.
The book “At War with Government” chronicles American conservatives’ decades-long strategic use of distrustful rhetoric as a means to power. And the events of January 6, 2020 represent a result of this effort to sow seeds of suspicion in our nation’s institutions.
I’ll end this posting with a quote from Sacred Heart University President John J. Petillo, Ph.D.:
What we have witnessed in our society over the past five years, in the realms of truth and civil discourse, is akin to death by a thousand cuts. Each time a lie goes unnoticed or unchallenged, it adds weight to an already extant body of lies undermining the fabric of our democracy. This culminated in seditious behavior motivated by such a body of lies: a coordinated, violent, intentional effort to trample our Constitutional processes and discard the results of a fair election.
Critical thinking and self-reflection have always been fundamental to higher education. A clear message of this month’s unrest, however, is that educators must appreciate as vital and immediate the direct connection between these fundamental capacities and the very survival of our society. This calls for us to reaffirm publicly and in unequivocal terms that one of our highest responsibilities is to ensure that our students —and by extension our citizenry— are equipped to distinguish truth from falsehood. This is fundamental not only to education but to democracy.
Email me at WritetoDougPorter@Gmail.com