“Education is the point at which we decide whether we love the world enough to assume responsibility for it …. And education, too, is where we decide whether we love our children enough not to expel them from our world and leave them to their own devices…but to prepare them in advance for the task of renewing a common world.”
Hannah Arendt, The Crisis in Education, 1954
Today thousands of people are out protesting, demanding their human rights and an end to excessive policing. Today we are also in the midst of a pandemic that has generated enormous fear. Yet people are willing to gather in the streets and risk their health and their lives for the cause. Policing and the pandemic are not separate issues. Both are about the distribution of power and resources, and the social allocation of risk and suffering. Underlying both, as Arendt might argue, is the question of how we can repair our world in the face of crisis, and how we can guide our children to do the same. These issues, policing, pandemic, and the future of education, are deeply interconnected.
