“In the midst of this crisis, we must begin to think about how we will deal with the multi-year consequences of the trauma and begin building a more resilient, more humane, and more just society to follow the devastation.”
On March 31st President Trump prepared the American people for the “hard days that lie ahead” as his medical advisors on the White House’s Coronavirus Task Force released new models predicting that up to 240,000 Americans could die as a result of Covid-19. These extraordinary numbers foretell a loss of American life the scope of which we have not seen since the Second World War in which 405,000 Americans died.
On the same day, the United Nations released a call for global solidarity in the face of the coronavirus crisis and warned that the “disease is attacking societies at their core, claiming lives and people’s livelihoods.” Up to 1.5 billion students will be out of school. 5 to 25 million jobs will be eradicated. The potential for global instability and conflict is high.
The potential trauma — both in terms of loss of life and economic toll — may be comparable to only a few other events in our modern history.
In the midst of this crisis, we must begin to think about how we will deal with the multi-year consequences of the trauma and begin building a more resilient, more humane, and more just society to follow the devastation.
Fortunately, we are not without models. In the darkest days of the Second World War, intellectuals and humanists — people like Jacques Maritain, W.H. Auden, T.S. Eliot, C.S. Lewis, and Simone Weil — dedicated themselves to planning for the renewal of society that would follow the devastation of war and hoped-for allied victory. We must begin now to plan for the renewal and healing that will be necessary when we emerge from the current crisis.
As Alan Jacobs has noted in his recent book documenting the work of these five intellectuals during World War II, their wartime attentions were focused on education and the formation of the young. They did not focus mainly on the practical concerns of how to rebuild the economy or governance structures to prevent future global conflagrations (though Maritain was actively involved in drafting the UN’s Declaration on Human Rights). Now we need a similar focus on our children, their education, and their futures. Not from everyone, of course. Governments and those in civil authority have immediate obligations to provide for urgent relief and recovery. But, we can’t neglect the tasks of outlining the post-crisis world that we wish to build for the future.
If we win the battle against Covid-19 — and the economic devastation, global instability, and political unrest it is likely to bring — how might our children and their children be educated, formed, and provided for so as to make them worthy of the victory? How can we educate for solidarity and cooperation to deal decisively with “those issues that make us all unnecessarily vulnerable to crises?”
The time is now to begin imagining a new compact for our children’s futures and the world we want to bequeath them:
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Social distancing must become the seed of a relational revolution.
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The devastation of child care businesses, the new experiences of schooling at home, and the heroic models of our health care providers must give way to renewed and permanent respect for carers of all kinds. Caregiving — a deeply human and dignified way of living — must be at the core of the world’s rebuilding. Caregiving must never again be consigned to the shadowy margins of the world’s economy.
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The virus has taught us that our lives — individual, communal, and global — depend upon the health of people, communities, and nations on the other side of the world. Notions of autonomy and independence should be reworked to privilege mutuality and solidarity. Educating our children for solidarity is now an urgent task for the years ahead.
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The potential for long-term instability, economic devastation, and the devastating and generational impacts of trauma demand that children be viewed as stakeholders in society. “Stakeholder capitalism” that does not treat children as stakeholders, exercise responsibility for the future, or take the concerns of employees, shareholders, or customers with young children seriously must be reformed, refocused, and redesigned to do so.
These are just some initial considerations for the design of a post-Covid world that privileges the flourishing of children and our responsibility for the future. In the coming months, all stakeholders should consider ways in which they can contribute to a rebuilding and renewal that is worthy of the victory to come.