This is a letter forwarded to me by Ed Johnson. He wrote this open letter to Richard Woods, Georgia Superintendent of Schools. In the letter, Ed questions Woods on the whether distance learning will be the new normal, why isn’t compassion the daily norm in public schools, and does it take a crisis like the coronavirus to make compassion relevant. I am republishing it here.

Dr. Richard Woods
Superintendent, State of Georgia
2066 Twin Towers East
Atlanta, Georgia 30334

Dear Superintendent Woods:

To you, sir, a heartfelt Thank you! for your open letter to Georgia school districts, parents, students, and teachers declaring “We must choose compassion over compliance” in adapting to the “new normal” in response to the coronavirus crisis.

Certainly, the coronavirus crisis offers plenty of sharp, undeniable reminders of just how inherently entangled, interrelated, and interdependent we are—all of us, everywhere, without exception or dependence on so-called race, creed, national origin or any manner of “protected status.”

“What affects one directly, affects all indirectly,” wisdom Martin Luther King Jr tried to help us grasp and practice.  So have and do others in various disciplines and cultures who are Systems Thinkers and those who seemingly intuit and honor the workings of “the interrelated structure of reality” (MLK Jr) and strive to live their life accordingly.

I believe children are natural born Systems Thinkers, hence are inherently compassionate until taught to be otherwise, in school and in communities and cultures, as by arbitrary and capricious competitions and rewards meant to motivate but are known to do just the opposite—that is, are known to demotivate and inculcate within children unhealthy self-protective behaviors below their levels of understanding and awareness.

I also believe excessive “instruction delivery” by technology, whether to the classroom or to the home, can only hasten undermining and destroying children as natural born Systems Thinkers hence as inherently compassionate young human beings.

And I believe “distance learning” is a misnomer, that it is just a more polished term for mechanistic “instruction delivery” to the home and to other places away from classrooms with educationists—that is, professional teachers and administrators.

Considering the forgoing matters, Superintendent Woods, leads me to ask you these questions, please: 

• Does “new normal” and adapting to it mean coronavirus-prompted expansion of “distance learning” will be made permanent?
• Why isn’t “compassion over compliance” the daily norm in our public schools in Georgia?
• Why must it take a coronavirus crisis, or any crisis, to make compassion relevant and necessary?
• Are you signatory to The Charter for Compassion, which states, in part: 

“We urgently need to make compassion a clear, luminous and dynamic force in our polarized world.  Rooted in a principled determination to transcend selfishness, compassion can break down political, dogmatic, ideological and religious boundaries.  Born of our deep interdependence, compassion is essential to human relationships and to a fulfilled humanity.  It is the path to enlightenment, and indispensable to the creation of a just economy and a peaceful global community.”
See the word “selfishness” in the above excerpt of The Charter for Compassion?  Well, in a recent email offering the thought that “charter schools are a kind of slow-motion coronavirus,” I ask this question: 

• So just how might we disrupt the intergenerational cycle of selfishness when and where appropriate to do so?

By the way, Superintendent Woods, kindly be reminded that I continue to look forward to receiving your response to the following questions you asked me to follow up with you on via email.  Taking you at your word, I emailed you on 13 March 2020 in an open letter—open letter because of some general interest in the matters the questions pose, even as related to compassion, it is now seen. 

1. Why has Georgia Department of Education the apparently biased procedure that ranks CCRPI (College and Career Ready Performance Index) scores for the purpose of singling out so-called lowest performing Title-1 schools—and only Title-1 schools—that then labels and designates the schools for some manner of targeted state intervention?

1. Will Georgia Department of Education publish a notice to the public clarifying what educational agencies—local and/or state—maintain records of “ninth grade starting cohort size” count data and so are obligated to provide to the public, upon request, those count data from the records maintained?

Again, a heartfelt Thank You!, sir, for your open letter declaring, “We must choose compassion over compliance.”

Let us all stay safe, stay healthy, and stay home as much as practicable and as a practical matter in doing our part in ridding our interrelatedness of the contagious coronavirus and the COVID-19 disease it causes. 
Respectively, I am

Ed Johnson
Advocate for Quality in Public Education
Atlanta GA | (404) 505-8176 | edwjohnson@aol.com

Image by Michal Jarmoluk from Pixabay