Alfie Kohn: The Pandemic Pivot: Turning Temporary Changes into Lasting Reform
You know you really should walk or bike more often, but the car is just so darned convenient. Then one day it breaks down and the replacement part won’t be available for quite awhile. The fates have conspired to get you some much-needed exercise while also reducing your carbon footprint! But what happens when the repair can finally be made? Will this serendipitous carfree interlude become a permanent change, or will you once again be driving everywhere?
Here’s the analogous choice that educators will soon face: Amid all the awfulness, the pandemic has yielded a few accidental benefits, such as the suspension of state exams, college admissions tests, and conventional grading. But will we cement these changes into place for the long haul?
That outcome is far from certain because of a fundamental truth: What people do matters less than the reasons they do it. That applies to individual behaviors: Kids, for example, are much less likely to act generously over time if they had been rewarded earlier for helping. It also applies to social policies: If, say, early-childhood education is justified primarily as an economic “investment,” then our commitment to it will prove fragile. Thus, it won’t be easy to pivot to a deeper rationale for eliminating something that we stopped doing only while — and because — regular schooling is on hiatus.
Of course, much of what the shutdown has done to education has been far from desirable. It would be worrisome if we continued to lean on online instruction — an all-too-plausible CONTINUE READING: Alfie Kohn: The Pandemic Pivot: Turning Temporary Changes into Lasting Reform | National Education Policy Center