For the past few months I have been thinking a lot about the upending of public schools by the Covid-19 pandemic. As someone who has studied the history of school reform in the U.S., I have been trying to make connections with the past that might inform present-day debates over district policies and classroom practices. So I am beginning a multi-part series of posts on the central point I have found that connects the past with the present: the resiliency of public schools over the past century and a half.
When educators speak of resiliency, they more often than not speak of it as a personal trait that individuals have such as perseverance, grit, the capacity to bounce back from adversity, and similar points. In these posts, I use the concept to capture one critical institutional feature of a well-known community institution that too often goes unnoticed.
In doing the research on the institutional resiliency of public schools over the past 150 years, I have also discovered that there is a bright and dark side to this important concept as applied to public schools. I welcome comments on these draft posts.
Hurricanes, earthquakes, and viral pandemics have closed schools in the past. These temporary disruptions forced parents, government officials, and school leaders to find alternative ways to organize schooling and teach the young. Each emergency revealed anew the interconnectedness of our lives. Parents realized the complexities of home teaching of content and skills, the need for enormous patience, and, yes, the importance of schools to the rest of society. Each upheaval CONTINUE READING: Resilient Public Schools: Bright and Dark Sides (Part 1) | Larry Cuban on School Reform and Classroom Practice