“Boring.”
That’s what I say when people ask me how this school year is going.
Are things back to normal? How are the kids? How’s school?
“For the most part.”
“Just fine.”
“Boring.”
At first glance, it’s as unbelievable to me as it is disappointing. Unbelievable because the 2021-2022 school year was such a footslog of malaise, anger, obstinance, doubt, policy farce and hygiene theater that even the cheeriest of teachers carried on as if they had a gun pointed at their head.
“Normal” had become so mythical it may as well have been Eden. But that’s all educators wanted: normal.
Eden, though, was an idyll, and the “normal” we thought we wanted we didn’t really want, we were repeatedly told. No, no. Not a week went by that educators weren’t reminded by people who wrote and thought about schools (but didn’t work in schools) that “normal” had not been working. The pandemic had exposed too many problems in American public schools. I won’t recite them here. To want “normal” was wrong. Unethical, even.
What we actually wanted -- and needed -- was change.
That a feasible S.M.A.R.T. goal does not exist for American public schools and that that fact itself partly explains our perennial disappointment in our schools is the subject of a different essay, but fine, on this we could all agree: American public schools fucked up. Mishandled the pandemic. Dropped the ball. Blew it.
And in an era of rancorous discord that reached its apotheosis in the middle of the pandemic, there was comfort in knowing even the neighbor with the yard sign you hated felt the same way you did about both your kid’s school. The one thing that unites Americans, Mark Twain once wrote, is our fondness for ice water. To that I’d also add “bitching about our schools.”
But change was coming, we were assured.
From the ashes of the pandemic we would see a “new approach” to schooling.
The pandemic had “open[ed] a door for significant reforms that would disrupt decades or century-old practices and rituals.”
We were at a “hinge moment in the history of our schools.”
We had a “once-in-a-century” -- no, “once-in-a-millenium” -- opportunity “to reinvent our system of education.” (Emphasis not mine.)
There was even a book dedicated to this entire idea, titled From Reopen to Reinvent: (Re)creating School for Every Child, that called “for the overthrow” of our schools.
Exciting stuff.
What would these new schools look like? What would the kids learn? If you walked into a random classroom during 2nd period on a Tuesday what would the kids actually be doing? Would there even be a “2nd period” in this radical new future?
Matter of fact, isn’t a classroom itself another relic of the pre-pandemic past? Do we need walls? What is a “classroom,” really?
Wait, no, actually, we need classrooms because the fact that kids weren’t in classrooms is one of the reasons why math and reading scores plummeted. So, for now, let’s at least stick to teaching reading and math in classrooms. And supplement it with … tutoring. Yes, tutoring. But other than that? !Viva la innovación!
I kid. Kinda.
I would be lying if I didn’t admit I was also eager for change. How could you not be? Even the most only-17-days-until-spring-break! kind of teacher stumbled out of the pandemic willing to slaughter a few sacred cows.
So what happened? This year is definitely not marked by radical change. Not much is different at all.
In fact, the year feels a bit like that scene at the end of the war movie where the veterans, at last home safe, shop for groceries, make copies at work, watch TV with their girlfriend. But they wear a distant look. In spite of the unspeakable danger they faced on tour, they still miss the action, the brotherhood, the clear sense of purpose. They go about their everyday business and think Is this it?
I doubt there’s a single student, teacher, administrator, custodian, school safety agent, secretary, paraprofessional, school aide, guidance counselor, social worker, school nurse and cafeteria worker who hasn’t found themselves at least once this year bent over a routine task quietly asking Why am I doing this again?
To be sure, chronic absenteeism is a big problem this year, but claims that students are balls of anxiety struggling to readjust are overblown.
The malaise and absenteeism is less a manifestation of trauma as it is the student version of quiet quitting. Students are hungry for purpose, but are as skeptical as ever that it’s to be found in the drudgery of 45-minute classes, five days a week.
This is not particular to America’s schools, by the way, and it partly explains why hundreds of thousands of men have opted out of the workforce, why every industry is desperate for workers overall, why college enrollment continues to decline, and why “meritocracy” has become a dirty word.
So, yes, the school year is kind of boring, pretty much normal, and I’m completely okay with that for now. All it takes is hearing “You’re muted…” to remind me of the miseries of Zoom school, and that those exceeded any excitement from its novelty and the noble satisfaction that came from educators’ clear sense of purpose during that time.
I only wish there was more of a recognition among the education media and the wonkocracy that for the time being this is where a lot of schools need to be, away from the inexorable churn of reforms. Far from suggesting that American public schools are above accountability, or that educators are so “exhausted” or “traumatized” to do their jobs, it is nevertheless worth mentioning that journalism’s inclination for negativity and novelty, to say nothing of a business model that incentivizes melodrama, will always prevent that DOG BITES MAN story from being written.
Beyond that, our disagreement about what the purpose of our schools is; our stubborn adherence to the Education Gospel; and the shifting needs of a society dramatically reordered by social media, automation and major demographic shifts means that it is nearly impossible for public schools to ever live up to their promises.
But “boring” isn’t always bad. Boring can be fine. If they look close enough, journalists might find an interesting story worth telling.
And even more, “boring” may just allow schools the space to try to live up to their promises, however impossible they may seem.
Above image: Stephen Shore; Clinton, Oklahoma, July 1972. At the Tate.