All about the Mask
Historically, pandemics have forced humans to break with the past and imagine their world anew. This one is no different. It is a portal, a gateway between one world and the next. We can choose to walk through it, dragging the carcasses of our prejudice and hatred, our avarice, our data banks and dead ideas, our dead rivers and smoky skies behind us. Or we can walk through lightly, with little luggage, ready to imagine another world. And ready to fight for it.
Arundhati Roy
When I read this quote by Arundhati Roy, it felt like she was speaking directly to educators, as they contemplate the return to school: our data banks and dead ideas vs. a completely new conception of how to equitably and even joyfully–a word that is nearly verboten in these discussions—educate our young.
What’s worth fighting for? What do we keep, and what are we willing to leave behind, passing through this portal?
Because it is a gateway to a new world. Consider this headline: Coronavirus may never go away, even with a vaccine:
Arundhati Roy
When I read this quote by Arundhati Roy, it felt like she was speaking directly to educators, as they contemplate the return to school: our data banks and dead ideas vs. a completely new conception of how to equitably and even joyfully–a word that is nearly verboten in these discussions—educate our young.
What’s worth fighting for? What do we keep, and what are we willing to leave behind, passing through this portal?
Because it is a gateway to a new world. Consider this headline: Coronavirus may never go away, even with a vaccine:
Embracing that reality is crucial to the next phase of America’s pandemic response, experts say. A future with an enduring coronavirus means that normal no longer exists.
The struggle to get people to think long-term, of course, is not new to public health. We know that smoking can kill us. Yet, it is still responsible for 1 of every 5 deaths in the CONTINUE READING: All about the Mask | Teacher in a strange land
