The Changing Face of School: How COVID and School Violence is Transforming Education

There’s no doubt that the COVID-19 pandemic and the continued problem of gun violence in schools are changing the way Americans think about education. Parents are exhausted, teachers are overworked and underpaid, and there has been enough recent evidence to prove that children have suffered greatly from spending time isolated from their friends and falling behind in academic benchmarks. Add the issue of schools now becoming places where children no longer feel safe in the mix, and education– and what it looks like going forward– is front of mind for both educators and parents alike.

The start-stop cadence of school openings and closings during the crisis moment of the pandemic led to uneven learning and deeply disrupted schedules for working parents, even for those that work from home. Parents wondering if schools are safe at all anymore have been increasingly turning to remote learning as an option for their children’s education, at least for the foreseeable future. Some schools were already starting to work with the idea of remote, or distance learning, but it wasn’t until the pandemic that almost every school had to immerse themselves in a crash course in remote education. 

While remote learning may be little more than an annoying, but minor adjustment for older children or for students who thrive with less in-person guidance from teachers, the economic digital divide is very real. The education upheaval of the past few years has laid bare the socioeconomic inequities that have left many children behind, and with a steep uphill battle to catch up.

In addition to the measures now being undertaken to keep schools safe in the midst of the ongoing threat of gun violence, how to help students recover academic losses from the pandemic is now front and center and is a problem that does not have an easy solution.

The erosion in confidence among parents and teachers as a result of the battle over the cultural aspects of education will also be a factor in determining what education will look like going forward, and most likely lead to some deciding to parents take a more individualized approach to their children’s education.

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