Education

The impact of the corona pandemic, which closed schools and required extensive online learning, is not what has really caused a crisis in American education. That crisis has been going on for a long time.

Educational inequality, lack of sufficient funding, cost of higher education, low teacher pay, uneven teacher training, lack of digital access for all students and, of course, Betsy DeVos.

But beyond that, education has lost its focus, especially at the post secondary level. Education has become primarily about careers and less and less about preparation to be a productive human being. Skills become more important than character.

Attention to athletics swamps the arts and sciences and becomes a primary identity of the college or university. Signifiers of achievement in academics don’t appear in the trophy case and seem only secondary accomplishments.

As schools struggle with how to reopen and how to educate, this may the time, not to just keep heads above water, but to seriously rethink what education needs to be and how it needs to be delivered.

Start with the belief that a quality, human-centered education for all is owed to every young person and that such an education makes America better for all.