What can schools learn from a cataclysmic event that happened 66 million years ago?

Consider the story of the Chicxulub meteor [1]:

“When the Chicxulub meteor hit Earth 66 million years ago, billions of organisms perished, and the survivors were forced to flexibly respond and form novel systems of interactions that were ‘good enough’ to survive. During this reorganisation, natural selection no doubt sorted rapidly between traits and strategies that functioned and those that did not. But where did novelty come from?

“A slow wait for the right set of mutations to come along isn’t an option during a catastrophic event. Instead, the flexible responses of individual organisms probably produced an abundance of novel variation, on which selection could act. These flexible responses would have ranged from innovative behavioural strategies, to new associations between various organisms, to novel phenotypes produced from developmental stress or hybridisation.”

COVID-19 may not be cataclysmic on the order of the Chicxulub meteor, but the massive shift to virtual learning and virtual work suggests that something has irreversibly changed.

If so, then we are in the midst of massive change.

Are you betting on the status quo to get you through that massive change?

Or are you betting on adapting through “innovative behavioural strategies,” “new associations,” and “novel phenotypes”?

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[1] From “Catastrophes and Calms,” by Renée A Duckworth, associate professor at the University of Arizona and associate editor at The American Naturalist. 

[2] We all learned about natural selection, but we may not remember that Darwin’s theory was updated in the 1970s to include “punctuated equilibrium.” According to this theory, species don’t evolve much over long periods of time. Instead, cataclysmic events--like the Chicxulub meteor--prompt species to undergo massive and rapid changes--some genetic, some behavioral, and some we might even call cultural.

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