Most of the ISS shielding protect against particles up to about 3 mm in size. Image Credit: NASAĬan we protect the ISS and other satellites? If we funded students rather than systems, the next pandemic would go considerably better, and we would have a stronger recovery from this one as well.Impact on whipple shields. Taking care of the kids in your family, that’s up to you. The lesson here is clear: The system takes care of itself as best it can. False tales of victory have already been written that would make Ramses III blush. We eventually will recover from this one, but that recovery will come only after a great deal of suffering and long-lasting, self-inflicted damage. The chart below shows results for Black and Hispanic students from 2013 to 2019 10 points approximately equals an average grade level worth of learning. The NAEP Trial Urban District Assessment already had documented a horrific academic disaster in New York City before COVID-19. Cutting instruction by more than half in a district that already had a below-average rate of academic growth will be an academic wound that leaves a deep and enduring scar on California and points beyond. The Los Angeles Unified School District, the nation’s largest, had a world of academic problems before COVID-19. Congratulations to Miami Dade, Gwinnett County Georgia and Houston. By that standard, the majority of K-12 students might be considered chronically absent this school year.Īlderman included the chart below that details instruction time by district. The term ‘ chronic absenteeism ’ is defined as missing 10% or more of school days in a year. Notice especially the cluster of dark blue dots on the bottom left of the chart, representing remote learning only districts in counties with low COVID-19 countywide infection rates.Ĭhad Alderman, senior associate partner at Bellweather Education Partners, recently examined 10 large school districts to see how much instruction time they were delivering to students by whatever means – in-person, remote, etc. As you can see, the decision regarding remote versus in-person learning by district has little to do with COVID-19 infection rates, and a great deal to do with the political leanings of the county in which the school district operates. But unlike Ramses III, we should not attempt to deceive ourselves regarding the scale of the damage being done not only by the pandemic but also to the response to it.Įarlier this year, the Brown Center on Education Policy at the Brookings Institution published the scatterplot above regarding school district re-openings. K-12 funding is guaranteed in state constitutions across the country, making it as permanent an institution as one can imagine in American life. Like Bronze Age Egypt, American public education will survive. Other large systems, like Pax Americana and the European Union, obviously are under considerable strain.Īmerican public education also is facing an unprecedented challenge. European imperialism and the Soviet Union both dissolved during our lifetimes for instance. The eldest among us today have seen multiple examples of system collapse. You can get a flavor for the phenomenon in an article by Nicole Gelinas on New York City’s current economy, which describes how interdependent the city’s industries are and how none of them currently are running strong enough to support each other. Scholars have used the phrase “systems collapse” to describe what happened in the Late Bronze Age. Egypt fared relatively well, surviving the Bronze Age collapse, but was never the same afterward. Several simply vanished only to slowly emerge from dark ages centuries later. PRIII likely exaggerated the scale of his combat prowess, but a number of other coastal civilizations did not live long enough carve propaganda into rock. One of the written records we do have is the inscription pictured above, left behind by Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses III (presumably the giant bow-wielder trampling the bodies of crushed enemies) who claimed to have smashed an invasion of the mysterious “Sea Peoples.” History doesn’t repeat, but it does echo. Written records from this period are scattered and not entirely reliable one of the unfortunate byproducts of this collapse was a large reduction in literacy rates. What we don’t know are the reasons why it happened. We know what happened: Multiple eastern Mediterranean civilizations – the Mycenean Greeks, the Hittites and others – disappeared within a 50-year span, roughly 1200 to 1150 BC. The Late Bronze Age collapse is one of the great mysteries of history and archeology. GK Chesterton, Space Age Systems Collapse
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