The problem with pandemic education ‘pods’
Parents are taking to Facebook, Nextdoor and PTA lists to form pandemic education “pods”: A group of half a dozen families or so agree to maintain a social unit — the better to keep the infection at bay — and either hire a private tutor or trade the education duties among the parents.
Think of it this way: A lucky few, many well-off and white, are getting the chance to hire a 21st-century Jane Eyre. (Business Insider reported this year that the cost of what is essentially a private, in-home tutor is anywhere between $25 and $60 an hour.) As for the rest? A number of states prioritized opening bars and tattoo parlors over getting schools up and running safely. Now, students will suffer the consequences of the education gaps in reading and math as a result.
Even in the best of times, American education is two-tiered, a product of the legacy of redlining, continuing segregation and the tradition of funding public education primarily via local property and sales taxes. Now, because we cannot fully reopen our schools, we are making it worse. That this is happening even as we are, as a society, attempting to address racial inequities and discrimination in a way we haven’t in decades is a sad irony.
It’s hard to blame the organizing parents here, to be sure. They’re not living out a home-schooling fantasy; these families would send their children back to school in a heartbeat if schools were open and they felt it was safe. Pandemic pods are not so much “opportunity hoarding” by the wealthiest as they are products of desperation. In particular, women — who are most of the organizers of these pandemic pods — are taking a hit both at home and on the job. According to the Boston Consulting Group, women are spending an additional 15 hours a week on tasks around the home — including child care — since the pandemic began, for a total of 65 hours a week. Continued de facto home schooling is a bridge too far for many. Without relief, many women will get pushed out of the workforce, perhaps permanently. So it’s no surprise that people who have the means are turning to any escape they can possibly find — or fund.
Pandemic pods are both an understandable reaction to our current medical and education crisis, and a short-term solution for a lucky few that will worsen the plight of everyone in the long run. Public-school closings and the concurrent rise of home schooling for those with the most wealth and social capital, no matter the reason, are a slippery slope, the sort of thing that occurs in countries that are sliding backward. A society that will not prioritize all of its children is a failing one.
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