I hope that everyone complaining about learning pods/micro schools is also advocating HARD for universal preschool & childcare in the future.

To be clear, I have huge concerns about the lack of equity created by pods & micro schools. It has been horrifying to realize that public school, one of our only true public institutions, is at least temporarily dissolving into a bunch of workarounds devised by individual parents

What’s heartbreaking about these pods is that they are replacing a system that at least had the POTENTIAL to be equitable with a bunch of deeply inequitable private solutions. It’s Betsy DeVos’s dream.

But—as much as I despise rich people—why on earth would you expect rich people, or middle class people, to approach this situation any differently? What other choices do they actually have?

Sure, it’s insufferable to imagine their children eating charcuterie plates in a field in the Hamptons as a geology PhD from Princeton leads them on a bike tour to search for examples of igneous, sedimentary, and metamorphic rocks.

What’s weirding me out, though, is people who are wisely pontificating about the evils of micro schools but who have hired babysitters, or participated in a nanny share or a coop preschool, or sent their child to a private preschool (most preschools are private)

One acquaintance who said that pods are by definition inequitable has also told me that she could never send her child to public school bc she just thinks public school pedagogy is too restrictive

As long as we allow them to, rich people are going to hoard resources and be horrible. But most of us send our kids to private preschool or hire babysitters bc state-funded childcare doesn’t exist. And that’s what will happen w school-aged kids while schools are closed.

And it sucks. I don’t know what the short-term solutions are. Obviously the govt should pay us all to stay home and not work. Failing that: true parent-run childcare coops?

But please, when you feel your indignation rising at the idea of learning pods, think about what families of babies and toddlers have always had to do, & what parents of school age kids have to do for after school care or summer camp, & how we can make those situations equitable.

And let’s demand resources, including $$$, to help people figure this out, bc leaving individual parents to reinvent public school (or private school) is maybe not gonna go great.