How Pandemics Can Change Education

When it comes to history, often our memories stretch only a short distance toward past events. We assume this is the only time that a pandemic affected children’s education. This isn’t our first time, nor will it be the last. Truthfully, over centuries, education has evolved and should continue to do so for the sake of our children. Since 3000 B.C., our species has survived at least 20 terrible epidemics and pandemics and countless less severe ones. These plagues ravaged civilizations and altered the course of humanity. Pandemics are global outbreaks of disease that can affect millions of people. The most well known of such plaques is the Black Death.

Also known as the bubonic plague, it occurred during the 14th century. It is believed to have originated in China and spread along trade routes, eventually reaching Europe in the 1340s. The most heavily impacted countries were those in Europe, particularly Italy and Spain, but the disease also spread to other parts of Asia, Africa, and the Middle East. They estimate the Black Death to have killed 75–200 million people worldwide.

In 1918 and 1919, the Spanish Flu is estimated to have infected 500 million people, and killed 25–50 million, of those 675,000 were deaths in the US. Pandemics can have significant economic, social, and political impacts, as we have seen with the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic.

During the late Middle Ages, when the Black Death pandemic occurred, schools existed. However, they looked nothing like what they do today and served singular purposes. In the beginning, only boys received any education through schools run by the Catholic church. Young boys learned Latin, grammar, and logic. At 14 or 15, they would attend universities. However, servants and peasants were banned from receiving any formal education.

This system of education in the Middle Ages varied depending on the time and the region, but schools for children were not as widespread or organized as they are today. In the early Middle Ages, most education took place within the home, and children learned from parents or tutors. As the Middle Ages progressed, schools appeared in larger cities and towns, and some monasteries and cathedrals also had schools attached to them. The Catholic Church often ran these schools and focused on teaching religious studies, as well as reading, writing, and arithmetic. However, education was not universal, and only a small portion of the population, typically boys from wealthy families, received a formal education.

Education for girls was not as widespread as it was for boys. In general, women from wealthy families were taught at home by tutors or by their parents, and those who were poorer they rarely received any education. Eventually, girls sometimes had the opportunity to attend a school. However, education remained mainly focused on boys, and girls did not receive the same educational opportunities. It was not until the 19th and 20th centuries that girls could get widespread access to education. Today, they have the same educational opportunities as boys in most parts of the world.

Theories on education changed over the centuries from a focus on religious studies, the knowledge needed to fulfill the duties of a knight, and toward much more altruistic and humanistic approaches. Leon Battista Alberti, an architect during the 15th century, believed that children should learn at home and not in an institution because he saw it as vital to social life. It’s interesting to know that a brilliant architect and true Renaissance man, one of the most influential art movements in our history, thought that social skills flourished better in a home setting.

During the 18th century in Europe, the time of Enlightenment, 17th-century empiricist John Locke’s theory of education led to more changes. He argued that learning came from experiences and that children needed to see proper behaviors and take part in improving their character. The concept of testing or assessment did not play a role in a child’s education. Neither did a classroom setting filled with same-aged peers and a teacher overseeing progress.

What we recognize today as an educational system obviously differs and has improved mostly for the better. Now women and minorities have the opportunity for a free education intended to make sure all children of all genders and backgrounds can read and write. But in some ways, this educational approach does not help all children and could cause them and their families harm.

Let’s go back to the Black Death during the 14th century in Asia, Africa, and Europe. No one understood how viruses, diseases, or bacteria worked, why they occurred, or even how to stop and prevent them. So, the plague spread from country to country due mainly to merchant ships that unknowingly spread it via their flea carrying stowaways, rats.

It took four years for the Black Death, a bacterium that causes bubonic plague, but can also cause septicemic plague and pneumonic plague, to traverse the globe. In its wake, it decimated populations in many countries and led to mass graves. Some countries saw their population drop by nearly 50% over those four years. Without vaccines or treatments, how did such a deadly illness eventually end? Its deadliness and implementing self quarantines led to its extinction. With fewer bodies to spread to and those it infected dying so quickly, it ran out of victims. That is the most common theory.

Our current pandemic is far less deadly, but we travel much more often, go farther distances, and more often than those living during the Middle Ages. Educational institutions with hundreds of children, teachers, and staff didn’t exist back then like they do today. We live in a more transient world, one in which it takes months for a pandemic to spread and not years. Though, this current pandemic might not seem as devastating as previous ones, who knows when or if another may happen?

As I mentioned earlier, pandemics are a part of our human existence, and we’ve so far survived 20 severe ones, like the Yellow Fever in Philadelphia in 1793, the Flu pandemic of 1889–1890, American Polio epidemic in 1916, and the often mentioned Spanish flu in 1918–1920. Obviously, pandemics and epidemics aren’t going away and will stay a problem. Humans will need to evolve and adjust, like we did before.

We’ve become a population that doesn’t accept or concern ourselves with the real deadly possibility that we are susceptible to tiny microscopic organisms. Just as education changed from the past to match the ideals of theologians, priests, kings, and philosophers, and educational experts, it’s changing now because of a virus we can’t see.

Teachers around the country took photographs of their crowded classrooms and placed yardsticks across desks to show the impossibility of spacing students the recommended six feet apart. Many teachers, despite the myriad of contagious viruses spreading aside from COVID, still teach in a room with up to 30 children because of overcrowding in school districts.

Even Dr. Sanjay Gupta, a well-known neurosurgeon, Emory University professor, and medical reporter, decided not to send his three daughters back to school. He spent weeks reviewing statistics, visiting his daughters’ school, and discussing with his family. Though his girls wanted to go back to school, they decided together that they should wait.

So, is this the end of school as we’ve known it? A lot of parents prefer to send their children to school. Some work full-time jobs and can’t educate at home. Others are unconcerned about the risks associated with COVID-19 or other respiratory illnesses. Some strongly advocate and believe that children must be in school to receive an excellent education and socialize with their peers. Whatever the reason, it’s clear that education, how and why children attend school, changes.

In the past, it changed for intellectual or practical reasons. It changed because of the opinions of scholars or politicians. Shouldn’t a Pandemic make us reexamine how we educate children? Not all change is adverse, and this alternative path we could take, where more children learn in a home setting, might lead to healthier and safer families and communities. At least now, more people will see it as a choice, something to consider as we wait for the next pandemic to arise. But it could become a permanent choice for those able and willing to give home education or home schooling a try.

Want to learn more? Resources for you:

20 of the worst pandemics and epidemics: https://www.livescience.com/worst-epidemics-and-pandemics-in-history.html

Education in primitive and early civilized cultures: https://www.britannica.com/topic/education/Education-during-the-Enlightenment

Education during medieval times:

https://sites.google.com/site/lifeduringthemedievaltimes/education

The Black Death:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death

Dr. Sanjay Gupta on keeping his kids out of school:

https://www.cnn.com/2020/08/12/health/covid-kids-school-gupta-essay/index.html