Ryan Petteway | Assistant professor, OHSU-PSU School of Public Health
COVID-19 has revealed that too many of us have been sleeping our way through the last 400-plus years, waking only when it’s convenient and comfortable. We couldn’t have otherwise arrived in this moment without the willful ignorance that enables folks to conclude COVID-19 is the core problem. The same ignorance would encourage us to believe “returning to normal” will make everything OK again. “Normal” is how we got here. It’s also made it clear that folks are capable of compassion, empathy and solidarity on a level that helps us to imagine what normal was supposed to have looked like all along.
Mainstream public health would have you believe that a vaccine is going to save us. It is not. It will certainly help. But if we want a future in which crises like these are averted entirely or substantially mitigated, we need to deal with our root pathologies: structural racism, wealth inequality and ecological disruption. They have structured the inequitable impacts that the pandemic has had.
Asking about how to “improve resilience” suggests that the root of the problem is communities not being strong enough or creative enough or resourceful enough, and it creates this narrative of “vulnerability” and “being at-risk” without interrogating the forces that rendered communities vulnerable. We need a different frame—one that understands communities are not “at-risk,” but rather, they are actively and systematically risked.
COVID-19 was the spark that landed on 400-plus years of kerosene. We need to clean up the kerosene, not optimize fire extinguisher distribution.
Dilafruz Williams | Professor, Educational Leadership and Policy, College of Education
THE PANDEMIC has exposed blatant economic and racial injustices even as it has revealed the connectedness of all life. It has elevated the need to not think of education as occurring solely indoors enclosed within four concrete walls. We must expand the notion of education and embrace “living” classrooms and schools. Being outdoors and learning in and with nature are essential.
We cannot go back to old educational paradigms where learning is anchored in seat time with often irrelevant, predetermined outcomes. We must focus on the holistic dimension of our lives, not simply cater to numeracy and alphabets. Children and youth become resilient when education is directly linked with the day-to-day nuances of life, with community engagement, and with exploration that generates questions, wonder and critical thinking.
Much of my research is related to equity, community-based education, environmental education and garden-based learning. The pandemic has opened up opportunities across countries and continents to be outdoors (with mask precautions). Beyond the centuries-old concept of indoor formal learning, we find that children, youth and adults are coming together to learn on school grounds and in parks, forests and gardens. These are all prime educational settings. The pandemic dares us to integrate life and learning.
Aaron Golub | Associate professor, Toulan School of Urban Studies and Planning
I THINK the pandemic has highlighted the selflessness of many workers who, in the face of significant personal health risk, have remained dedicated to their jobs serving people in hospitals, grocery stores, on buses and trains, and in countless other ways. Sadly, many workers haven’t had a choice—and the pandemic has revealed just how barbaric our economy has become. Workers with little safety net, no health insurance and substandard pay have been asked to risk their health to keep the economy going, with arguably little reward. I would go so far as to say it raises the question of whether we can call ourselves a society at all, considering the vastly disparate burdens and risks borne by different members of our communities.
My field of urban studies and planning has long challenged how urbanization creates and reinforces the “haves” and the “have-nots.” The pandemic hasn’t changed that, but it certainly makes it more urgent. Housing affordability, job security, fair pay and benefits (including access to health care), and basic health and human dignity are not only urban issues, but affect and reflect the very fabric of our society. These issues all rose to the surface during the pandemic. For example, renters were already facing precarious housing markets before the pandemic, and tenant protections were an important part of the urban response to the pandemic. While it was exciting to see renter protections implemented, we can only hope they remain long after, as they surely will still be needed.