An educator’s personal story: The year is 1949, not 2020, and the disease is polio, not covid-19 - The Washington Post

An educator’s personal story: The year is 1949, not 2020, and the disease is polio, not covid-19 - The Washington Post

An educator’s personal story: The year is 1949, not 2020, and the disease is polio, not covid-19

Larry Cuban is emeritus professor of education at Stanford University and a leading scholar on the history of school reform. Before his long Stanford tenure, he was a high school social studies teacher for 14 years and a district superintendent in Arlington, Va., for seven years.

He is the author of numerous books about education, as well as scholarship articles and op-ed pieces on classroom teaching, the history of school reform, how policy gets translated into practice and education technology. His newest book, “Chasing Success and Confronting Failure in American Schools” from Harvard Education Press, will be available in April.

Cuban has also written an education blog for 11 years, called Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice, which always offers sober and smart analysis

He wrote a recent piece on his blog that was uncharacteristically not about schools but about a personal experience he had with a viral outbreak from the past, during which he contracted polio.

It seems like an appropriate time to run his compelling story now, with most of the country’s schools closed because of the global spread of the novel coronavirus known as covid-19, and with millions of Americans hunkering down at home, fearful of getting sick.

By Larry Cuban

San Angelo is in West Texas, the county seat between Abilene and the Mexican border. Farms, oil wells and cattle ranches fenced with barbed wire dot the county. Blessed with a warm climate and reputation as a healthy place to live, in one year San Angelo added to its reputation in ways that city leaders dreaded.*

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In mid-spring, the newspaper reported that a local child had come down with a viral disease. Previously, when this disease occurred, it had not spread. This one, however, did.

Parents began arriving at Shannon Memorial Hospital with “feverish, aching youngsters in their arms,” CONTINUE READING: An educator’s personal story: The year is 1949, not 2020, and the disease is polio, not covid-19 - The Washington Post