Of Course Education hasn’t Learned a Goddamned Thing from Covid
Because why would an institution dedicated to teaching others be capable of learning anything at all?
In every school across the country, significant numbers of children are not meeting the learning standards their states have set for them. Graduating seniors are missing huge chunks of expected content and skill, according to every newspaper and magazine to report on it. Within classrooms, the situation is even more dire. Vast armies of kids are moving forward without evidence of knowing the content or skill we insist qualify as educated. And we are panicked because we insist all those specific classes — all that specific content — is foundational to adulthood. And the measurement — tests, grades, certification — is the only legitimate evidence at any given time.
Simultaneously, all those kids are socially underdeveloped for having been isolated and alone for two years and emotional wrecks from the fear and anxiety and pressure thrust upon them by crisis and quarantine. Not only are students unprepared to study the material because they are missing earlier work, they are emotionally and socially a few years behind where they should be. A 9th grade classroom is not designed to work with kids who act like they are in 6th grade. Nor can 3rd grade…
