It’s an ill wind that blows no good. Pandemics are no exception to the aphorism They can and do have positive outcomes. I’m not talking about potential positive outcomes. Some writers are already pontificating about some kumbaya moment when we stop being red state blue state antagonists. I’m also not talking about probable outcomes like a return to respecting science. I’m talking about real, provable outcomes.
The most famous example of positives outcomes from plagues/pandemics is, of course, the Renaissance. Exhibit A is that the plague broke the chokehold the Catholic Church had on European society. Just like today, church officials claimed the plague was God’s punishment for the wicked. Only it turned out that Yersinia Pestis and the fleas that carried it attacked saints and sinners alike. The faithful began to lose faith when they saw surviving church officials literally head for the hills. True, Protestantism eventually tried to step in, but Chauliac et al. showed that scientific method was a more reliable way to defeat illness than prayer. Interesting side note–one wave of the Black Death that devastated Europe and ended the feudal system originated in Wuhan, China. Sometimes history repeats itself even when we do learn from it!
And there are already signs that the majority of Americans are taking science seriously again. Social distancing and mask-wearing behavior have definitely been successful where used. The fact that so many people are practicing these measures, even in states where the governors have not issued mandatory orders, is encouraging. But one area of the country that will absolutely bloom due the virus fallout is the academic world.
“Publish or perish” is the key to success in the academic world. And getting graduate degrees, as well as jobs in universities, requires unique and timely research proposals. Just gathering statistics from the COVID-19 pandemic will supply thousands of researchers with years of work. Obviously, epidemiologists, microbiologists, and economists will see much fertile territory to wade through. Sociologists, political scientists, historians, and psychologists will all have a field day in their areas. But as an educator, I’m more interested in possible advances in learning theory.
In my essay “Creating a New Metaphor in Education Reform,” I pointed out that education does not have a learning theory that is based on brain research. Rather, we have lots of ideas based on logic, test scores, and best practices. The long vacation that many students received from the shutdown of schools will provide a basis for some serious educational research. One obvious area is how well distance learning worked. What ages groups benefited the most from distance education? What socioeconomic divisions appeared? What is the effect of lost time on student performance? This question is of particular interest to me.
Educators around the country are discussing options to make up for lost time. Summer school is one option. But suppose the break actually benefits kids and improves their test scores? That’s not wishful thinking by any means. Many children who stayed home, interacted with parents, worked on their creativity and imagination as well as helped with household chores such as cooking. This mirrors what Finland did to significantly improve student performance in their country.
Back in the Seventies, Finland’s students played leapfrog with US students for a place in the mid-twenties on the international scale of student performance. We opted for the easy political solution: market-based competition as well as more and higher stakes testing. As a result, we are still mired in the mediocre mid-twenties in terms of our scores. Finland took a radical approach. They actually empowered educators to research best practices and recommend educational policy changes. They mandated that all teachers get a master’s degree in order to help them find out what needed to be done. Politicians then implemented these new policies and now Finland is consistently one of the top countries in the world educationally.
What did they do? First, they made preschool available to all and forced preschool teachers to be highly trained and paid them as important educators instead of babysitters. A young child’s brain is like an undeveloped tract of land. You have to put in the infrastructure (utilities, roads, fiber optics, etc.) before you build houses. Only in the case of children. they need to develop neural networks that will allow them to learn more complicated concepts as they climb the education ladder. Maria Montessori’s pioneered this successful strategy.
Second, Finland recognized that boys and girls don’t develop at the same rate. Parents and the children decide when they want to start formal schooling up until age seven. Lastly, students get very little homework and they choose the curriculum they are interested in. Those who are more interested and better suited to trade schools are given that opportunity Even high school students get little homework. Students are tested on a voluntary basis. As a result, almost all students are successful and enjoy school.
Based on Finland’s success, American students may actually benefit from their extended vacation at home. It is something for today’s high school students to investigate when they start doing graduate work a decade from now. The best possible educational result from the pandemic would be changing our education system so that it actually prepares all students to be successful. It is said that insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. Science is doing the same thing over and over again and anticipating the same results. It would be lovely if we tried science to determine education policy for a change. But if nothing else, academic journals and graduate students will be busy researching and publishing for a long time.
