With that caveat out of the way--I honestly don't know what I'm talking about--let peer into my crystal ball and forward some predictions about education in the year of our Lord 2022. Here's my take on what I don't know much about.
1) School boards will continue to be "nationalized." It would be lovely if Covid simply disappeared after the latest mutant, but it's not likely to die any time soon, which means that the madness surrounding masks and vaccinations will continue. The sides are so deeply entrenched and heavily armed that barring bodies being burned in the streets, things are not going to change until Trump disappears. Don't look for that to happen either. To mask or not to mask? Good luck with that one. We're dealing with fanaticism. Draw up your sword and buckler.
2) Teacher shortages will become--if they're not already--deadly. There will be more early retirements and the national average for young teachers staying in the business will continue to shrink. I'm not sure what's in store for educational programs in colleges because it's almost inconceivable that school boards look for qualified teachers under the old guidelines. More untrained teachers will have to be hired simply to fill classrooms. There's a silver lining to all of this, of course: just as wages for teaching substitutes, now, has skyrocketed, salaries, for those who stay in, will increase substantially. They'll have to.
3) Right wing crazies will continue to scream and swear about Critical Race Theory (CRT), even though there really hasn't been nor will be some clear definition of what's as evil Tucker Carlson claims it is. After the Republican win in Virginia's governor's race, the whackos will, like some mad chihuahua, sink their teeth into the issue and fight like heck. To Kill a Mockingbird was recently voted the best novel of the last 100 years. If the intent of all that horror about CRT is to keep white kids from feeling guilt, then some teachers, at least, will think twice about assigning literature like that novel. Can white kids read To Kill a Mockingbird and not reflect on what white folks have done--and continue to do--to people of color? I don't think so.
4) Race resentment will, sadly enough, continue, as more and more white people begin to fear a future in which this country will be home to more people of color. A recent Iowa lottery features a mixed race couple. It's just not that long ago that miscegenation was a crime. As long as big-time commentators on FOX continue to bang that drum, racial resentment, insidious as it is, will continue to surface, making teaching about race--like teaching about LGBTQ--a mine field.
5) As they have for a century now, experts will create conference agendas that tout sparkling new innovations in classroom strategies. Something new will roll in as if it were tidal, and administrators will find a way to surf on it, only to discover what we've always known, that the most successful classrooms will be run by the most successful teachers.
6) And then this, blessedly. In every school in every community under the sun really magical moments will occur, moments so wonderful that they take the words out of a teachers' mouths, moments so life-changing that few kids leave the classroom untouched. Isn't it wonderful to know that despite Covid and CRT and angry, snotty parents, moments of sheer beauty will happen, not because those moments were outlined a page of objectives, but because what happens in a classroom is a live thing that rarely goes exactly where it's supposed to but sometimes--just sometimes--goes where no man or woman has gone before.
You're a parent? Pray, really, that such things happen in your son or daughter's classroom. In 2022, they do and they will, thank the Lord.
1 comment:
Where is the science, think we can hear that from both sides? What was right yesterday is wrong today.. and it's not all caused by the divisions of the parties.
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