Network Schools – Wayne Gerseny to https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2022/04/03/magazine/thomas-piketty-interview u w B l.html?h I’ll smid=url-share the Is for

A few days ago I received a heartwarming essay on the value of public schools written by Donald Cohen titled “COVID-19 is Putting the Value of Public Education on Display“, an article that made many of the same points I described in an earlier blog post that I honed into an op ed piece that was published yesterday in our local newspaper. In the essay, like my post, Mr. Cohen points out all of the services public schools provide above and beyond instruction on the basic skills. But I believe he overstates one of the qualities provided by public education in reality (as opposed to in theory):

But perhaps most importantly, public schools provide kids with the opportunity to learn alongside their peers. Schools are where the community comes together to learn and grow regardless of skin color, income level, sexual orientation, or any other difference.

I desperately wish this were so and (probably incorrectly) believe it was the case in the small college town where I attended high school in the early 1960s. I DO believe ALL public schools aspire to being a place where their “…community comes together to learn and grow regardless of skin color, income level, sexual orientation, or any other difference”… but I also know that fewer and fewer communities posses economic or racial heterogeneity and, therefore, there are fewer and fewer opportunities for children to experience the opportunity to be with children of different skin colors, income levels, or nationalities. I also sense (and fear) that too many students in our country encounter different treatment based on their gender and/or their sexual orientation and that changing those behaviors will take decades.

Looking forward, I hope that public schools will break down the artificial boundaries that have the effect of isolating students based on their race and income, for if that were the case I believe there would be far more empathy that we experience in our society at large today. MAYBE our on-line encounters based on current school boundaries could be intentionally re-designed so that groups of students from the heartland could meet groups of students from the coast… and groups of students of different races could interact with each other to discuss common issues… and students of different economic backgrounds could interact with each other. MAYBE we could find a way to use our technology to bring students from disparate groups together in virtual classrooms to engage in dialogues about their experiences during the lock down. if we did so, I think we would find that we have more in common with each other than we now believe.