In his 2018 book, Jared Diamond examines 12 factors that help or impede an individual in overcoming a personal crisis and how those factors might apply to national crises for countries, both in the past and in the future. He comes up with a list of 12 factors that play into the eventual outcome, analyzes past situations, and then applies them to the current conditions of Japan and the United States to make us wonder if the trying times in which we live may spell doom for our nation.

I recommend reading the book. It’s narrative and leaves out ponderous statistics, graphs and charts, and other numerical measures that would bore the pants off all us ordinary people who don’t massage numbers and think it fun.

It’s a book about entering a crisis and how one or a nation does or does not emerge from it. The more I read, the more I draw an analogy to public education. Let’s examine each factor and think about its application.

1. Consensus that there is a crisis. There is no doubt that all parties, from the most staunch defenders of public education to the worst critics who would end what they sneer at as government schools, agree that public ed is in a crisis. However, there is no consensus about what that crisis is. On one side, there are those who believe the problem is the lack of options for parents seeking the best education for their children, whether the cause is location, inability to meet tuition requirements, or special needs, and those who believe the lack of resources for public schools has caused them to fall into a death spiral.
2. Accepting responsibility for the problem versus blaming others, indulging in self-pity, and playing the role of a victim. I find little evidence that anyone on any side of the education wars (there are more than two sides) accepts responsibility and avoids playing the victim. Public schools whine about how the cards are stacked against them (and they are), but few within those schools accept that there are legitimate reasons why people are checking out and thinking about how they need to change. However, those who advocate for the end of public schools rarely, if ever, acknowledge that they fail to offer a better option. Sure, anyone can tell a few stories to back up their position, but after picking the best cherries out of the bin, they ignore what’s left for the hoi polloi.
3. Build a fence around the problems that need to be solved that brings selective change that maintains the current strengths that should be maintained. Yeah, it’s not happening. We all know that. Yet, if we could, what about our systems of education for children in the K-12 ages would all of us preserve as strengths? Let’s start with the obvious. Most of us would agree that we want our schools to continue sports. Next up, I think we would want music programs to continue in all schools. Yes, I know, school systems have cut these programs to meet testing demands, but have you ever heard anyone saying I would rather my kid spend hours working on math in place of learning to play an instrument? I haven’t. There are others that I could mention, but that would bring arguments that would take us back to #1: do we actually have a consensus about what the problems are?
4. Getting help and resources from others. When it comes to public schools, help (mostly) is not coming. Philanthrocapitalists like the Gates Foundation or the Zuckerberg Initiative don’t offer resources and step back to see what others can do with it. They offer help selectively in order to create examples to offer as evidence that their preconceived theories are correct. Spoiler alert: their record is one of failure. However, the picture is not completely dismal. Taxpayers in many jurisdictions across the blue, red, and purple fabric of our nation have been willing to tax themselves to improve their schools. However, this support is often bled like an 18th century applying leeches to a patient to divert this much needed financing to private school options.
5. Using others as models of how to solve problems. If someone says Finland one more time, I’m going to scream at them until I get committed to the Northeast Florida State Hospital. (Spoiler alert: no one should want to be there.) There are plenty of models from other nations we could learn from, but we refuse to do so … ’cause we’re ‘Murica,’ you know? We’re exceptional and have nothing to learn from others.
6. Identity. What do public schools offer that parents and others can count in the education of children? First, that every child counts. Public schools have legal, ergo societal, requirements to provide every child with a free and appropriate education. If an individual school or district fails to do so, parents have the right to challenge them. Schools are more than schools, they are community centers. A few years ago, my high school was playing football game on a Saturday (Covid years). Adjacent to the campus was a community park where several young men were playing basketball. As our game began, they stopped their activity, sat on the hoods of their cars, watched our players, and cheered for them. Why? Our athletes/students don’t come from the neighborhood, as a magnet school, they come from all over the US largest city in terms of area. Still, they identified with the school in their neighborhood. No alternative option can claim that.
7. Honest self-appraisal. Not happening. Back to #1, although we have a consensus that there is a crisis, an existential crisis for public education, we don’t agree on why and no one seems to want to talk about why that is. From the public ed side, we fight vouchers (there are many reasons to do so including the fraud, grift, etc. that are enabled by these programs) without engaging in asking ourselves why people want to take the money and run.
8. Historical experience. How have we experienced and survived crises like this in the past? The answer is that public education has not. The segregation academies that arose after the 1954 Brown vs. Board of Ed decision is not a past experience to learn from, but the genesis of the current crisis we face.
9. Dealing with failure. Although we could argue with ‘failure,’ the fact is that public school systems have responded to challenges by creating the types of schools the public demands. Within my district, we have schools that are dedicated to academic advanced studies, military style programs, single-sex classes, arts, and more. Parents seeking options will find one in the school system, including an elementary school dedicated to educating dyslexic children.
10. Situation-specific flexibility. Oh no, oh God no. Public education does not have the flexibility to respond to challenges that arise at its various school sites, whether that is denied by state legislatures passing restrictive laws, districts enacting one-size-fits-all policies, or an administrator hell-bent on control at all costs.
11. Core values. Given the gotterdammerung of the current situation, I’m not sure we have core values anymore. Back to #1. What do we all agree upon that is non-negotiable about education? There seems to be nothing.
12. Freedom from constraints. Ah, we can close out with an easy one. No public school system has any freedom from constraints. They come from draconian laws passed by state legislatures, parental demands, activity by dark money funded groups like Moms for Liberty, and the culture wars.

What does it take to survive a crisis however many years it takes and to emerge better for it? Based on these criteria, we had better prepare a funeral for our public schools. A few of them suggest that we will come through the crisis the better for it, but most suggest we are unwilling to face up to the challenge. Once, Rome was considered unassailable despite the Punic Wars, but eventually it was sacked and despoiled. If we want a different outcome, we need to think hard about the crisis we are in.