Read the Report | by Evan St. Lifer
In Upheaval, the third book in Jared Diamond’s trilogy chronicling how and why civilizations rise and fall, he details the fortunes of six countries including the U.S., examining how they dealt with crises at various points in the 20th Century that threatened their very existence. Upheaval is particularly relevant to our PreK-12 education system, which is more vulnerable than ever before, as it continues to deal with the pandemic’s ongoing and still-unpredictable impact. How will schools recover? Who will drive lasting and scalable innovation and how? What types of innovative partnerships or collaborations will emerge?
Diamond provides a blue-print from which schools and their partners in the ed tech ecosystem can learn and pressure-test their own solutions. The author utilizes a template, call it a check list of key determinants that must be fulfilled, for organizations and communities to successfully recover–and ultimately thrive—from conditions that have pushed them to the brink.
But Diamond’s analysis does not focus only on the degree to which nation states are able to overcome historic challenges. He parallels personal resiliency and argues that both conditions are critical factors in overcoming adversity by creating and committing to crucial “turning points.” In fact, he lays out a dozen factors each for overcoming personal and national crises. There is great similarity between both criteria and so in the interest of efficiency, see a summarized a blended version of them below. School leaders as well as those helming companies and organizations serving education will be able to intuitively ascertain how these factors may be driving them toward discernible progress and/or holding them and their colleagues back, if they are honestly self-assessing:
- Acknowledgement (that one is in crisis)
- Acceptance (of one’s personal responsibility to do something)
- Building a Fence (to delineate and focus on specific problems or challenges to be solved)
- Obtaining help (material or emotional) from other individuals and groups
- Using External Models (other individuals or entities—schools, organizations, etc)
- Ego strength (sense of self or purpose)
- Honest Self Appraisal
- Experience (Learned) From Other Crises
- Patience
- Flexibility
- Core Values
- Freedom from Personal Constraints
Many of these factors seem obvious, but within them lies a deeper meaning for the PreK-12 community, as well as the code for scalable and sustainable success, as Diamond has documented, by pressure-testing them, exhaustively, against the historic struggles of several nations across the globe.
Toward that end, here is a more nuanced look at how these concepts might dramatically impact the way schools respond to our nation’s latest crisis—the global Covid-19 pandemic. It’s also worth acknowledging that due to major challenges that Diamond enumerates, the pandemic is an emerging and evolving cataclysm that has only exacerbated a series of recalcitrant and chronic American crises, including: the continued rise of income inequality accompanied by a decrease in socio-economic mobility, political polarization, institutional racism across our public and private sectors, degradation of the delivery of reliable and credible news and information, the insidious influence of social media, un-Democratic representation at the voting booth and in our political process, and a health care system that is both disproportionate and dysfunctional in its ability to serve all Americans.
Of course, all these existing challenges pervade our nation’s schools, and now they must reinvent themselves due to an unprecedented health scourge that is disrupting the teaching and learning construct on which American education has been built.
Diamond’s first two factors, Acknowledgement (#1) and Acceptance (#2), sound obvious, but the challenge is in taking personal responsibility which almost seems discordant when a school district has been disrupted by a pandemic. It’s easier and more familiar for someone to feel victimized by an external force they had no role in cultivating. This presents districts an opportunity to deploy an Honest Self-Appraisal (#7) that allows them to ask critical questions about their Flexibility (#10), their impermeability, as well as their level of preparedness for whatever the future holds.
Practically speaking, organizations also need to be able to Delineate (#3) and target their highest-level priorities and not metaphorically try to “boil the ocean,” as these latest pandemic-related challenges are complex, fluid, and most of all, vexing. Which is why it will be critical for them to Obtain Help (#4) and Use External Models (#5). Obtaining help also involves honest self-appraisal, since districts will need to ascertain which competencies they simply do not have and will need to acquire. This is not a condemnation, but rather an opportunity to embrace the fact that there might be partners—including a local college or university that is already deploying a robust distance learning platform, for instance—that can help a district think differently and possibly utilize resources that have previously been beyond their scope of expertise. Schools need to aggressively explore other models, too, and not just other adjacent (school) models. They need to consider other models that have disrupted similarly anachronistic institutions, including hospital systems in their community, as well as the healthcare system, which has seen pockets of innovation (telemedicine is a good example). At the same time, they must boldly seek out both traditional as well as non-traditional partners to help them innovate, meaning technology firms that currently operate in the school ecosystem and those that don’t, but that are driving disruption per above.
The good news is that schools have a great sense of purpose (Ego Strength, #7) and while their Core Values (#11) may differ to some degree, most educators are dedicated to helping their students learn, grow, and thrive.
Diamond posits that it is not enough to avert a crisis or a challenge. Just getting by does not pass muster, according to his definition of long-term success driven by authentic problem-solving. Temporary fixes or stop-gap solutions open the door to a relapse or reverting to the challenging condition. Thus the school community has a generational chance, a moment, an opportunity, to reinvent itself in a way that ensures that they can make good on their promise to cultivate their students for school and lifelong success, preparing them all to be productive, dynamic, and avid participants in the new and emerging economy.
Evan St. Lifer serves as a Senior Advisor to nascent and early-stage Edtech companies as well as companies devoted to the social/emotional growth and well-being of children and families. Evan is on the edWeb Advisory Board, and met Lisa Schmucki, the founder, during his 15-year tenure at Scholastic, where he held leadership positions in a variety of capacities, developing businesses and products serving a range of markets including Early Childhood, PreK-12, After School, Family Engagement, Summer Learning, and Libraries. He and edWeb share many areas of mutual areas of interest, including delivering for teachers more fluid, intuitive, and powerful ways to collaborate and share best practices, 24-7. Which is why he’s committed to turbocharging teacher learning communities. Evan and Lisa have both recently joined the Advisory Council for the ERDI Alliance for Education Impact.
He most recently helped launched the Florida Technology Foundation, the non-profit and educational off-shoot of the Florida Technology Council—which focuses on the needs and priorities of the state’s technology sector and advises the state legislature on information technology policy. Before his career at Scholastic, Evan was a journalist for nearly two decades, which included investigative reporting for The New York Times and culminating in a five-year stint as Editor-in-Chief of School Library Journal.
Jared Diamond is the author of Upheaval. He is a noted polymath and Professor of Geography at the University of California, Los Angeles. Among his many awards are the U.S. National Medal of Science, Japan’s Cosmos Prize, a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship, a Pulitzer Prize for General Nonfiction, and election to the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. He is the author of the international best-selling books Guns, Germs, and Steel, Collapse, Why Is Sex Fun?, The World until Yesterday, and The Third Chimpanzee, and is the presenter of TV documentary series based on three of those books.