成人抖阴

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In my District of Columbia neighborhood, everything pretty much ground to a halt on Friday, March 13, 2020. My kid won the school鈥檚 bilingual spelling bee in a crowded auditorium buzzing with speculation that the school probably wasn鈥檛 reopening next week. Hours later, an announcement from administrators confirmed it: our pandemic had begun.

By March 20, I鈥檇 realized that this was one of Those Moments, a historical signpost when your choices and behavior will echo back at you later, whenever someone asks, 鈥淲here were you when?鈥� By the middle of that summer, though, as my social world filled with people shocked that their vacations and family reunions had become superspreader events, I鈥檇 also realized that we were collectively going to spend most of this catastrophe it away. 

The rest, as they sort of say, became history. The pandemic鈥檚 consequences were 鈥� are 鈥� too dire to ignore, but also too inconvenient to fully acknowledge. Four years later, we鈥檙e also at an awkward remove from its most dramatic moments: The pandemic is largely concluded as an historical event, yet we鈥檙e not yet far enough out to have anything like a clear view of what鈥檚 happened. Most of us are still too battered from the burdens we carried to pause and genuinely reflect. We鈥檝e all spent so many hours of the past four years jabbering into webcams at screenfuls of tiled faces. March 2020 was so many pixels ago. 

That鈥檚 why this anniversary should also be an invitation to extend a modicum of grace to ourselves, our peers and our schools. These were four punishing years. Pretending they can be quickly shaken off is . Both individually and collectively, Americans have not yet accepted the scope of the tragedy and we鈥檙e taking it out on our schools. 

This odd unwillingness to recognize the pandemic as an unavoidable calamity is part of why we鈥檙e still endlessly relitigating pandemic mitigation measures in schools 鈥� closures, masks, quarantine policies, and the like. If, in 2019, we鈥檇 conducted a thought experiment, asking folks to predict the educational impact of a then-hypothetical viral pandemic that would be transmitted via breathing and , most of us would agree that kids wouldn鈥檛 steam forth making the usual academic progress. 

And indeed, the real pandemic unquestionably U.S. students鈥� academic trajectories, even if they appear to . Yet here on the other side of that disaster, we鈥檙e determined to assign blame for dips in U.S. students鈥� academic achievement, as if learning loss could have 鈥� should have 鈥� been avoided in a moment of . Say it plain: There was no educational and public health playbook that could have wholly averted the pandemic鈥檚 impacts on kids., 鈥淸T]he declines, all told, strike me as relatively small, given the context: a brutal pandemic that terrified the country and killed more than a million of its citizens, upending nearly every aspect of our lives along the way.鈥�

But because we can鈥檛 face that, we鈥檙e now in an educational 鈥淥ne Weird Trick鈥� era, as the field floods with quick-fix solutions to reversing the pandemic鈥檚 impacts (particularly with federal pandemic recovery ESSER funds sunsetting). While it鈥檚 always appropriate to prioritize high-quality learning opportunities for children, it鈥檚 a short step from 鈥渓et鈥檚 help kids accelerate their learning鈥� to 鈥渋f we do enough now, we can 鈥� yet again 鈥� banish the pandemic鈥檚 impacts from kids鈥� lives鈥� (particularly if we just buy the right new ed tech product). 

The reality is much harsher. Researchers have known for years that it鈥檚 much tougher to shift students鈥� academic trajectories later in their careers. That鈥檚 why children who miss early literacy benchmarks . It鈥檚 also why investments in high-quality early learning 鈥� like universal pre-K programs 鈥� . Now, we have a country of children who, again, , faced . that closures contributed to lost learning, but only as one of many, interrelated variables, and 鈥� as noted above 鈥� students鈥� academic achievement in the U.S. appears to have suffered less than it did for students in peer countries that reopened on different timelines and with different COVID mitigation strategies.

Furthermore, the educational story of the past few years is far more complicated and painful than we鈥檇 like to admit and its aftereffects won鈥檛 vanish because we invest in some limited tutoring programs. Nor could they have been averted if only schools had found some magic mitigations formula to maintain normalcy for kids even as a whole lot of us repeatedly exempted ourselves from responsibility for flattening the curve. 

Why are we so resistant to facing this fact of the pandemic, even now that it鈥檚 mostly receded from daily life? It鈥檚 flatly impossible to look back at these four years without seeing how national leaders鈥� rhetoric drove this attitude: real and massive suffering coupled with willful self-deception and disinformation. The Trump administration flailed through COVID鈥檚 early stages, insisting it would be over in a few days or weeks, then dabbling in pseudoscience 鈥� remember , , and light and/or disinfectant 鈥溾�� into people鈥檚 lungs? 

That deadly unseriousness was contagious and collectively punishing. We鈥檒l never know how the country would have behaved under less erratic leadership, but this band of feckless incompetents convinced masses of Americans that the pandemic could be largely ignored if we just wanted it badly enough. Their glib irresponsibility built the narrative that still plagues U.S. public education today 鈥� this notion that schools could somehow persist as normal when absolutely nothing around them was. It seems obvious that the ungainly federal response damaged Americans鈥� trust in public institutions and the social strains it caused ripped deeper holes in our shared social fabric. 

American pandemic flounderings were also personally crushing for many of us. Looking back, I feel a flat, dull, full-body weight settle back into my spine, that familiar 2020-vintage exhaustion. And that鈥檚 why, I know this for certain: whatever we all think now about the precise sequence of school closures, reopenings, mitigations, learning loss, and so forth, the past four years ripped a chunk out of the well-being of U.S. , and . 

That鈥檚 probably the clearest reason that the country鈥檚 still so determined to shift the pandemic out of mind and/or erase its impacts. No one wants to accept how far it knocked us 鈥� and our children 鈥� off the trajectories we hoped we were following. I remember reaching a point in the endless work-life-kids-panic pandemic juggle where I developed this yearning to just sit quietly on a rocky beach somewhere and watch the waves roll in. To just meditate and let my mind unspool from the tension of masks and ambulances. 

I kept telling my wife, 鈥淚 bet I could sit there and stare for days before my head finally got back to something like normal.鈥�

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