The Covid-19 virus has exposed the raw underbelly of the educational community in the United States (and the rest of the world).
At the same time, it has created an opportunity to redesign K-16 schools for the 21st century and beyond. Most schools continue to operate on an agrarian calendar, closing the schools so children can plant and harvest during spring, as well as winter and summer breaks. Are we saying that learning stops during the summer?
The virus has given us the capacity to leapfrog from the 17th century method of learning to the 21st and beyond .
The educational system has been broken for a while. It has produced gaps which need to be narrowed or closed before we move forward. Some of those gaps include:
- Gaps between schools with Caucasian students and children of color schools
- Access to high quality enrichment programs
- Schools in rural, inner-city and native American schools and those in suburbs.
- Student access to internet devises.
- School access to high-speed stable internet.
- Coordination between agencies trying to narrow educational gaps
- A comprehensive long-term plan for improvement.
- Funding gaps between high property-based areas in a state and low-property taxed places in the same state.
- Gaps between educator salaries and those of similarly educated individuals.
- “Banker’s hour schools” open from 9AM to 3PM, 5 days a week, 9 or 10 months a year.
- Lecture or rote method of instruction rather than interactive learning.
- Teaching students “what to think” instead of “how to think.”