The True Cost of Inequality: Learning Lessons from the CoVid 19 Pandemic
By: Peter Lang
Tags: Inequality, Covid 19, Education Reform, New York

The Covid 19 virus has just begun to reach us here in western Massachusetts but we know it will be here shortly, and there have been many steps taken in our area in anticipation. Many stores are closed. Government offices, movie theaters, gyms, theaters and music venues, and other places where people gather have been closed. Restaurants are only serving curb side takeout. Schools are closed and feeding programs are set up for children who depend on the schools for breakfast and lunches.

As we take these steps it becomes evident that the true impact of this epidemic, especially as it expands over the next weeks and months, will be very different depending on your relative status when it began, and as is so often true, those who will experience the greatest hardship and loss will be those already in the most vulnerable circumstances. Those who work low paying jobs, with no health insurance or benefits, with little or no savings, with few material resources will have a greater challenge in weathering this crisis than those who come into it with health insurance, with greater material resources and options, with the ability to live off savings, to obtain food and necessary supplies, who have a home in which they can ride out the storm without fear of eviction.

What is certain is that poorer people will have worse infections and be more likely to die. We know that poorer people have poorer functioning lungs. Studies around the world have shown that richer people have healthier lungs, independent of whether they smoke or live in polluted areas. This relationship, poorer people doing more poorly, is called the social gradient in health. It is there for most health conditions. We ignore it at our peril. (Stephen Bezruchka, Alternative Radio, March 14, 2020)

These extreme circumstances we are experiencing at the moment are a speeded up and more intense version of what we experience in more “normal” times. Before the arrival of the virus, Reverend Barber from the Poor People’s Campaign states that there were 140 million people poor and low wealth people in US, 15 million who could not afford water, 4 million who have poisoned water (such as those in Flint, Michigan), 62 million not making a living wage. Nearly one in five children goes to bed hungry, not because of the virus but because of the gross inequality in this country that has produced a few who are impossibly wealthy and a greater majority of our population that are desperately poor.

Inequality is a major factor in the health of a population. Researchers Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett, in their 2009 book The Spirit Level point out that those countries that are most unequal in income have the worst health results across a broad spectrum of indicators, including life expectancy, infant mortality, mental health and drug use, teenage births, violent crimes, and more. Our current crisis dealing with the coronavirus provides an extreme example of how this plays out. The more unequal our population, the more members of our towns and cities are unhealthy coming into this crisis, and the more at risk that leaves all of us. We are only as healthy as the person standing next to us, or the person working at the convenience store, super market, or shelf stocker bringing us those cherished roles of toilet paper. We are truly in this together.

There are larger, long term lessons to be learned here for those of us connected to public education. There has been constant pressure on schools to improve performance, with an emphasis on raising test scores. None of this pressure, none of the proposed solutions includes reducing inequality, addressing systemic issues such as racism and sexism, or recognizing that schools are not operating in a bubble, isolated from their surroundings. We can’t fundamentally improve our schools without making fundamental changes to the communities in which they are situated. If we want to improve test scores make sure all of our students are getting enough to eat, have safe and secure places to sleep, and are living in family situations that are stable and healthy. Make sure there are jobs that pay a living wage for the adults in our communities, that our neighborhoods are free toxins and poisons, that there is available child care, medical care, and mental health supports available and accessible to all. Address systemic racism, sexism, and other forms of discrimination. Make strong efforts to connect schools with their communities, recognizing ways in which we have common purpose and can take advantage of our collective resources and wisdom.

Photo by NeONBRAND on Unsplash

There are of course many things we can do within schools to support our students to do their best learning beginning with developing strong relationships with them, making clear to them in every way possible that they are valued and fully welcomed into our classrooms. We can make sure they are getting healthy food for breakfast, lunch, and as snacks during the school day, and during weekends and vacations. We can make it clear that there is no tolerance for put downs or discrimination in our buildings. We can help children learn more about their own learning processes and to recognize that there are many ways to learn and to communicate that learning, and then we can make sure to offer a range of teaching approaches and assessments that include that wide range of intelligences and processes. We can begin to hire educators who love learning, who are creative and passionate and who are skilled and dedicated to sharing that love with their students (rather than focused on raising test scores). We used to hire people like this to teach in our classrooms and there was much more joy and creativity in our classrooms then. We can disappear the high stakes tests, which have added stress and rigidity to our educational system while adding no educational benefit.

All of these steps will help in the short run, but if we truly want to make educational change we must broaden our focus to making societal change. Our current health crisis makes clear that our current system does not provide for the health and well being of our population, and that we can’t continue as we have been, increasing the gap between the few who have and the many, many who do not. It is a system that is beginning to collapse on itself, and unless we work towards improving the lives of all the members of our communities, in school and out, we cannot sustain. We are experiencing a wake up call and hopefully we are wise enough to pay attention.