In July of 2011, Columbia university community college released a study delineating a much higher dropout rate for online and hybrid college learning models.  This is a huge concern, of course, with most US institutions planning some form of altered structure for the year.  Previous to the pandemic, there was already a 38% first year drop out nationally, so one shutters to consider what the altered reality may produce.

Many parents seem to recognize this threat with skyrocketing demand for personalized instruction, a welcome development to the pre-existing educational system, particularly when combined with an element of mentorship that many late teens sorely lack.  Aside from the voice of a nagging parent or the voices of peers with various unhealthy motivations, they frequently suffer from an absence of a base of reason, able to ground and stabilize them.  

Though the pandemic has been disastrous in too many ways to count, I hope the current evolution in education will produce these sorts of positive changes that were already long overdue.  Annihilation can be rebirth if we rethink the world intentionally.  Providing our youth strong role models should be at the core of our society’s structural reassembling.