Despite the illness and death there has been a silver lining to the pandemic: we have, almost by force, confronted some harsh realities many had long chosen to ignore. We knew the city was designed to be of, by and for businesses but now they are much more open about it, revealing internal dissonance. Which winner will she pick? That might seem important until you recall that the city we thought we would get was always a myth about as real as the bodacious babe the old fart gets with each bottle of Viagra. You know it isn't real, don't you?
So what is important? Well, we now know that as far as parents are concerned their children are important. The pandemic has burned away reliably opaque clouds of delusion as parents were forced to see what was being called "education." Not a pretty sight. Not only did parents realize they could see, they seem to have discovered there was quite a bit they needed to look into. The more they saw the less they liked and so they took and demanded action. The system, unaccustomed to scrutiny let alone criticism, pushed back declaring upset parents should be considered domestic terrorists. What is actually quite impressive is the handbook describing how the deflection techniques long used by teachers and principals can be leveraged in board meetings. Apparently some folks always held the opinion that parents should have no say in what their children were taught and were bold enough to say such things out loud. But not without consequence. This happened alongside CRT infused pedagogy and elimination of assessments and standards for social justice reasons. The latter revealed internal dissonance (much like we see with our head dwarf) with teachers at odds with admin.
Now we know that DeKalb County Schools are not expecting a rebound in attendance and while some blame the pandemic these are the same people who've been immune to criticism until recently. Maybe the pandemic was just a catalyst.
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