What if the way that education has been structured doesn’t prepare our kids for life in an increasingly stressed and chaotic ecosystem?

What if the hard realities they have had to face through this pandemic, social unrest and national are preparation?

“Falling behind” implies that life can only progress, that economies and nations and environments continually develop & expand.

They contract too. On a heating destabilizing planet negotiating mass crisis is a skill set.

They aren’t falling behind if the institutions we have designed unsustainable.

What if clinging to all the old metrics is what brought us to life in a damaged ecosystem?

What if “falling behind” is the only way to recalibrate?

How can they be falling behind if they are all falling behind?

What if we worried more about how our kids rise to the challenges in front of them and in front of our communities than we worried about “getting ahead”.

Headlines speak of a “lost generation” - because forces more powerful than our institutions emerged.

There have always been forces more important and powerful than our institutions.

Our institutions have been failing people for generations.

What exactly, is “falling behind”

I think about the family members that survived being flattened by the Great Depression, that survived Auchwitiz & Bergen Belsen, that hid in caves and fought with the Partisans in Greece.

They weren’t “falling behind”

They were- like thousands of children all over this planet facing crisis, scarcity, violence - living in a world where they had to negotiate utterly unavoidable realities.

Often with extraordinary heroism compassion and resourcefulness and flexibility.

The problem isn’t falling behind. The problem is the nascent crisis that is unfolding every day that is far more powerful that our institutions and will require dramatic, rapid collective change if we are to survive it.

We are something essential about rapid collective change.

Many of our kids, many of us are learning powerful and essential lessons that will never be measured on old metrics.

We focus on the isolation of shut downs & quarantines -

But nothing is making our unavoidable interconnectedness (and failure to acknowledge that) more visceral than this virus.

The choices I make effect others. The choices others make effect me.

These are essential lessons

These measures only make sense for long periods of relative stability, prosperity or expansion.

Not sure that I see many indicators that that is what our future holds.

(And these systems were already designed to make sure that only some get ahead and others go under.)