How Higher Education Can Survive and Thrive Through COVID.
One of my earliest memories growing up was seeing my father’s name on a plaque hanging on a forgotten wall in the rural school that both he and I attended. The walnut framed sign had my father’s name and a few others, and I recall it had some stars on the top and said something about service. When I asked my dad about it, he said, “oh — yes, that’s a list of all of us boys who were drafted to serve in the Army in WWII during the summer after our junior year of high school.” For dad, this was both a gap year and an overseas experiential learning experience all in one.
Despite imagining what happens to a 17-year-old Ohio farm kid suddenly driving a Sherman tank in Europe, my dad came out amazingly well adjusted. Any socio-emotional damage that occurred was not apparent, and the micro-aggressions that he was exposed to along the way did not seem to have an effect on his demeanor. When asked about the whole experience, he told me once that it was like a bad camping trip.
As a historian, I know the perils that come with comparing wildly different times and generalizing from a few experiences. As an educator in modern America, I genuinely try to be tuned in to a broad range of sensitivities, yet at the same time, I have to ask myself, what has happened to resiliency? Can a semester or two of canceled in-person classes and no fall football suddenly threaten an entire generation? If we listen to the media, vocal students, suburban parents, and certain politicians, the answer is yes. I’ve even heard some faculty members complain, “that they just can’t teach this way.” Yes, ladies and gentlemen, it’s true, a semester or two canceled lectures will result in a dystopian tinged intellectual wasteland with catatonic students who may never recover.
There is no question that the in-person college experience is essential for some individuals, but is social distancing, temperature checks, masks, and Plexiglas representative of the college experience? The myth that online classes somehow lack any value is incredibly misguided and not backed up by universally accepted data. While there is no question that academic and co-curricular activities build community and enhance learning, they’re not gone forever. For now, can’t we adapt?
Sure, it’s a convenient complaint that online education is somehow less worthy or that a temporary move to cyber U will damage our children’s socio-emotional development. But with irony, you have to ask yourself, how can a generation of students who last Spring were hardwired to their phones not handle a semester of virtual lectures and online discussion activities? Surely the Instagram and TikTok generation should be able to manage digital content. Maybe I’m missing something.
So we have to change the way we teach and learn for a semester, so what? Ok, the change is not perfect. It’s especially tricky for fields that require experiential learning such as clinical and labs. We need to learn how to proctor, we need to learn how to ZOOM, and we need to learn how to do a host of other things we have never tried before. The situation is also not ideal for those who lack internet access at home or learn best in cohort environments. As bad as it is, we just happened to be living amid a connectivity revolution. It’s almost like our networks, devices, and resources were set up for us to use. As a materialist society, we made Amazon work for us, and we can do the same with education.
Yes, Fall has already started at most schools, and some are moving forward in-person, and others online. Some who opened in-person are already moving back to online in the face of COVID after just a week, and others are moving forward with in-person learning and are doing fine. Regardless of what happens as we proceed, opportunities to build resiliency will continue. Instead of caving in and saying online is insufficient or we can’t do without a season of football, or we can’t do without the college experience, or we can’t pay full price, how about we make some lemonade instead?
The best thing I can teach my students is that we get by when we have to, we find different ways of doing things, we adapt, we synthesize, we learn. This is not an easy objective to achieve, but that’s the unique value that I take from the pandemic. COVID has set us up like an open layup. It’s allowed us to show that we’re adaptable, that we’re resilient, and that science works. These are experiences that I could never teach my students in a lecture or through a reading, and these are qualities that nicely tie in with what employers are looking for. Creative thinking, adaptability, and resiliency are the Maltese Falcons of education. Although it may not be apparent to the stakeholders of higher education, how we handle this situation will speak volumes and will be the example that our students remember. Experiential life long learning is driven by example, not by drama.
As my dad got older, he was amazed at the miracle of the Internet and the smartphone, and I never heard him complain if the web went down for an hour or two. His generation lived through a depression, a world war that forced the rationing of essentials, and an ongoing struggle with civil rights. It didn’t turn out perfect for everyone, but they trusted us with the torch, and they didn’t expect us to give up when things weren’t perfect. Progress comes to the doers, the hopeful, the resilient, and those who can adapt. It’s time to show our students, the public, and the media that we are the learned ones, and our mission to educate will continue. The time for complaining has passed, it’s time to learn about resilience.
