“Something fundamental has shifted in American childhood and the culture of school, in ways that may be long lasting. What was once a deeply ingrained habit — wake up, catch the bus, report to class — is now something far more tenuous,” observes Sarah Mervosh and Francesca Paris in a fascinating article they recently published about the state of education in our country.
The main concern is that ”absenteeism” has “exploded” since the pandemic, doubling to include a quarter of all students.
Lately, I’ve been thinking about the pandemic. Some days it seems like it never happened; others, I am aware of this post-pandemic feeling life is now recognizably unpredictable and even volatile: as we track the war in Ukraine, the impact of AI, and now the election this November.
And when I saw the statistic that students (often encouraged by parents) skip school twice as often as before, it somehow rang true. I wonder if we all vaguely feel that the old rules don’t apply by a factor of 2x? A post-pandemic orientation that can lead to reinvention – how we work and embrace new possibilities in our lives – but it can also prompt some of us to decide to check out for the day. In other words, something fundamental has shifted, and it’s not just in our schools.
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