Willpower Is Not Going to Be Enough
The pandemic has stripped education of its social context, and schools aren’t reckoning with the psychological tax on students
By Tess Wilkinson-Ryan
College students are being invited back onto campus after a summer of isolation and confinement, with strict instructions to stay apart. School officials, pleading with students to treat their new autonomy gingerly, are leaning hard on shame to get compliance. The president of Penn State recently admonished students, “Do you want to be the person responsible for sending everyone home?”
Meanwhile, elementary-school students are resuming the school year on Zoom, and districts are laying down new rules: Keep laptop cameras on; dress properly, as if attending school in person; stay seated for the lesson — even when, best-case scenario, sitting at the kitchen table instead of the math table.
While the demands vary by age — don’t space out on camera; don’t congregate on the quad — many share a faulty premise: If young people would just be careful and pay attention, everybody could face the school year as though the disruption were cosmetic rather than structural.
Willpower is not going to be enough. The life of the American student, from kindergarten through…
