Unprecedented school closures? Not entirely

In 1937, Chicago public schools delayed the start of the school year for several weeks because of the disease. “Students were told to stay at home for their own protection, and parents and educators got really worried about the lost instructional time,” says Hines.

To compensate, school leaders launched a large-scale effort with local radio and newspapers to bring lessons into the homes of the district’s 325,000 elementary school students.

“At that point, radio was a fairly new technology,” Hines says. “Using it in education was pretty experimental and pretty cutting-edge for the day.”

Lessons were short, presented in 15-minute slots throughout the day on six cooperating radio stations. The broadcast schedules were available in the local daily newspapers, along with directions and assignments. Because students were used to the radio being a medium for stories and entertainment, the school district adopted tactics from the commercial broadcasting world, such as bringing guest stars into its lessons.

Even then, equity was an issue: Some students’ families didn’t own a radio or lived in areas with poor reception, while others had two or three radios they could set up in different rooms of the house so that siblings in different grades could all listen to their lessons at the same time. Access to technology for teaching and learning has been a problem throughout the history of education, Hines says, and exacerbated during times of crisis.

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Transcript:

Denise Pope:

Welcome to School's In. I'm Denise Pope, Senior Lecturer with the Graduate School of Education at Stanford University, and I'm here with my co-host, Dan Schwartz, Dean of the Graduate School of Education. And actually, I should say I'm not here with Dan because I am seeing Dan through a screen because we are practicing healthy social distancing in honor of Covid-19.

Dan Schwartz:

So I have just been running to every room in my house to see can I find a stable internet connection. So that is part of... Fortunately I have a house, I'm not in a studio apartment. But anyway. Dr. Denise, "is there a precedent for this" Pope?

Denise Pope:

I can say after the last 10 minutes for sure no, there was no precedent. No, I think we are living in a very different time and I'm glad we're doing these shows to offer some perspective.

Dan Schwartz:

So how is your sense of time? I was in a meeting where I was truly confused whether it was Wednesday or Thursday. It took me a while to realize I was switch. Everybody else was looking at me like I was crazy.

Denise Pope:

You know it's so hard when you're not in your normal routine. Right? And so not only do I not know what day it is half the time, I am eating at crazy hours, like having a late lunch, or I get hungry two hours after I eat a full breakfast. My schedule is completely off.

Dan Schwartz:

So I've increased my discipline for lots of things actually. I think I'm going to come out of this, probably won't shave until it's over, wear rattier clothes, but I'm eating more regularly, so.

Denise Pope:

I should have that.

Dan Schwartz:

Well, my mom is 92 and she lives at home and she has people that come in 12 hour shifts. And I've always been annoyed she doesn't know what day of the week it is, but now I get it.

Denise Pope:

Now you get... Oh, you're going to have more empathy for your mom.

Dan Schwartz:

Yeah. Until she reminds me that my favorite food is stewed prunes. And it never was, mom. I never like stewed prunes. That was somebody else.

Denise Pope:

Wait, does anybody like stewed prunes? I just have to say, does your mom like stewed prunes [inaudible 00:02:32]?

Dan Schwartz:

Okay. So listeners, this is what it means to be stir-crazy. You go off on stewed prunes. So today, as we all look at this, you wonder, is there a precedent? Is there something in history where we can look back on this? So for example, Stanford has developed an emergency operation structure that was developed as a result of Hurricane Katrina. There's an ops center. There's command and control. And this has been very effective at the most pressing questions of life, safety, continuity. And so we learned a lesson from history there, but there must be other examples of this for schools where basically school stopped. The closest I could think of when I was trying was like when teachers go on strike. And so how do we handle that effectively?

Denise Pope:

The whole reason they go on strike is to try to show people that you can't handle it for long periods of time, and then the strike breaks when they come to an agreement. So that's the bargaining power. I think here nothing we can do to break the strike. We don't know when this thing is going to end.

Dan Schwartz:

Although you do hope that as a consequence of this, people will have sufficient memories that as we come out of the recovery, they'll say, "Oh, these are the things we need to improve." This is a chance to change the structure so that inequities don't get exacerbated. Things like that.

Denise Pope:

Right. Well, and I've said this before, I'll say it again. I hope we come out of this with real renewed respect for teachers.

Dan Schwartz:

Denise, would you like to introduce our guest?

Denise Pope:

We are so lucky today to have an ed historian. Mike Hines is a Professor in the History of Education here at Stanford. We've had him on the show before. We discussed how schools can and should incorporate different people's experiences into their history curricula. But today, Mike is back with us, via Zoom, to help put into historical context the moment that we're living through today with Covid-19.

Michael Hines:

Hi. Thanks for having me. It's a pleasure to be back on, and it's good to see both of you, even virtually.

Dan Schwartz:

Thank you. It's good to see you too. I'm glad you're doing well. So tell us about Chicago.

Michael Hines:

In thinking about how to restructure my own classes here at the Graduate School of Education for our move to virtual instruction, I started thinking about what we could learn from the history of the field. And because my research is based in Chicago, I ended up deep diving into an experiment from the 1930s that I think has some lessons for how we think about this move to remote learning or distance learning or virtual learning, whatever we want to call it. So in the late summer of 1937, an outbreak of polio hit the city of Chicago. As you know, the disease was highly contagious and was especially dangerous for young children where it caused paralysis or death.

Dan Schwartz:

So it was particularly around children, like with coronavirus children to some extent or spared. But this one was, that's horrifying. If the fear is my child will be crippled for life, that is a horrifying situation.

Michael Hines:

Absolutely, absolutely. And so understandably, the opening of the school year in September was delayed by several weeks. Students were told to stay at home for their own protection, and parents and educators got really worried about the lost to instructional time and the loss of student learning. So as a result, the then superintendent, a man named William H. Johnson and his assistant superintendent, Minnie Fallon, started thinking about how they could bring the school into the homes of students. And they launched a cooperative experiment using the resources of local radio stations, of newspapers, libraries, public schools, to deliver that content virtually while students were kept out of school.

Dan Schwartz:

So how do they do that? So one of the things that I really see going on in the schools now is lots of different schools have very different solutions. So some schools are, "Well, we're going to try and have every kid get an iPad." Other schools are sending packets of information. Other schools are saying, "We'll get back to you in a week." Were they able to control the full district and bring it forward?

Michael Hines:

Yeah. So because Chicago had a very hierarchical structure in their school district at this point in history, the assistant superintendent and the superintendent were really able to coordinate really well with the different institutions that they needed to, to make sure that everything was working hand in hand. Minnie Fallon-

Dan Schwartz:

This is the corrupt era of Chicago. Is that correct?

Michael Hines:

Yeah, yeah. Well, historians would note that there are probably several corrupt eras of Chicago.

Denise Pope:

Good point.

Michael Hines:

This was certainly one of the more corrupt eras of Chicago history. That's a completely separate story, but the superintendent at the time would be booted out almost a decade later for some graft and some corruption and some influence peddling, but this is one of probably his better accomplishments. So during the crisis, this group of teachers and administrators working out of the Bureau of Curriculum for Chicago Public Schools basically came up with virtual lessons to be delivered by radio. And at that point, radio was a fairly new technology, only a few decades old, and using it to experiment in education was something that hadn't been tried widely yet. Certainly they didn't have SiriusXM. So these lessons and this thing were pretty experimental and pretty cutting edge for the day.

Dan Schwartz:

Oh, that's awesome. So I have thought to myself, if there was no internet, if there was no video conferencing, how would I survive? But it turns out radio.

Michael Hines:

Yeah, yeah. You're looking at it right now, right? You're on it right now.

Denise Pope:

Speaking of which, this is School's In with Denise Pope and Dan Schwartz, and we are talking with Michael Hines about the history of the polio epidemic in Chicago when all the schools had to close and they had to use radio to educate the kids. So tell us a little bit about the curriculum. How did they actually do this?

Michael Hines:

Okay. Well, I think one of the first lessons that we can learn from the school by radio movement in Chicago during this polio epidemic was that it was really well organized. Elementary teachers and principals, and I should note here that the program was for the districts' about 325,000 elementary school students in particular. High school students were told to review lessons from the previous year. They were a little bit older, it was a little bit easier to plan things for them to do. So this was mostly aimed at elementary school students. So elementary teachers and principals wrote and prepared the lessons. They were overseen by subject area committees to ensure the overall quality and the continuity of the lessons.

And then once that material was ready, the segments were presented over radio in 15 minutes slots of airtime. So those slots were donated by six cooperating radio stations within Chicago and the schedules of all those broadcast times and dates, along with directions and questions and assignments, those were all available in the local daily newspapers. So every morning students and their families could find the lessons for their own grade level and be prepared to set their dials to the appropriate station-

Dan Schwartz:

That's brilliant.

Michael Hines:

At the appropriate time.

Dan Schwartz:

That's brilliant. That's so smart. Our newspapers are not... Well, I guess not everybody uses a newspaper anymore.

Denise Pope:

I mean, everyone gets their news on phone and or TV and different channels and different strokes for different folks. But the other thing that I thought was pretty brilliant is they recognized that it could only really handle about 15 minutes at a time, because right now there are kids all over the US who are told you have to sit on your computer and be in a virtual classroom, some of whom are there from 8:30 in the morning till 3 o'clock at night with maybe a break to go grab a drink or something. So this 15 minutes at a time thing, I think is smart. I like that they're putting the questions in the newspapers. And then I also read that there were certain days devoted to certain subjects. Can you say a little bit more about that, Mike?

Michael Hines:

Oh, absolutely. So different subjects were covered on specific days. So for instance, Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays were each devoted to social studies and science content. And Tuesdays, Thursdays, and then some Saturdays as well, were slotted for English and math. And then what's really interesting is that after each airing, a committee of two principals who had been listening in to the entire program would review the lessons and then rate them on different aspects like the clarity and articulation of the presenter's voices, the suitability of vocabulary for the younger audience. And that was all just checks and balances to give a basis for improvement on the next broadcast.

Dan Schwartz:

Wow.

Denise Pope:

Oh, my God. That is something that we so don't have right now. Not only do we not have checks and balances, we have no idea really what's going on. No one else is sitting in and listening in to the teacher's Zoom lessons or checking the quality. Everyone is just in this free for all, let's try and get something up there and cover the topics. So that's very, very impressive.

Michael Hines:

Yeah, I think it definitely was. And I want to go back to something that you said earlier, which is that the lessons were short and sweet, they were to the point. I think as anyone who's tried to host a virtual meeting of any kind, probably agrees, without physically sharing a location, it's just much more difficult to hold an audience's attention. And the Chicago Daily Tribune actually commented that, "Without being in the same physical location", they said, "Any other distraction, more attractive for the moment may lure the listener away." And I think that's probably as true now as it was 80 or 90 years ago.

Denise Pope:

And true for us as well. This is School's In, with Denise Pope and Dan Schwartz. We hope you're not being lured away. We are talking with Michael Hines about what went on back in the 1930s in Chicago where they had to close all the schools due to polio.

Dan Schwartz:

So I just have a technical question. So you said there were six radio stations, so it was like one radio station for grade one, one radio station was grade two, is that how they set it up?

Michael Hines:

Some of the radio stations did cover multiple grade levels, but it was on a week by week basis. Basically because the radio stations were donating their airtime, they got to pick and choose what they would like to cover on which days.

Denise Pope:

I'm guessing that not everybody had a radio, I mean a lot of people, but maybe not everyone, or maybe you lived out a little bit more out there and didn't get every station or something. So we're having all this problem with inequality and who has devices and who has internet access. Is that something back then that they saw with the radio as the device?

Michael Hines:

Absolutely. I think access to technology, uneven access to technology, is one of those problems that's recurring in the history of education when you talk about new technologies for teaching and learning. So although Superintendent Johnson estimated that about 315 out of the 325,000 students tuned into the radio lessons on a given day, the schools also had to create makeup work for students whose families didn't own radios, didn't have access to radios, places where there were poor reception, or where a lot of families during the polio crisis were actually forced to leave the city of Chicago altogether for their safety.

So all of those things had an effect on who could access the lessons and who couldn't. Of course, on the opposite end, some homes reported that they were able to go to really extraordinary lengths to continue to ensure that their children could listen in. So you heard about families setting up two and three different radios in different rooms of the same house so that multiple students on multiple grade levels could all listen into their lessons at the same time. So yeah, that inequity is really exacerbated during a crisis.

Dan Schwartz:

[inaudible 00:16:05]-

Denise Pope:

I mean, there's... Oh, go ahead, Dan.

Dan Schwartz:

No, so their solution wasn't to say, "We'll buy everybody a radio." Their solution was to say, "We'll make paper and pencil things, and then somehow we'll deliver it to the kids."

Denise Pope:

And I think some of that is still happening today as well. We'll make packets for kids who don't have the internet or don't have devices, and we'll get them out to them. Either we're mailing them or there's pickup points and there's pickup points that you could pick up your textbooks and pick up your school lunch too.

Michael Hines:

I've heard of many schools doing something similar as far as distributing work packets, much like the packets that might be sent home over a winter break or over a spring break. And those are a stop gap measure to try and address this problem of inequitable access to technology.

Denise Pope:

So there's a line that you write that says that observers worried that the pupils who benefit by the radio lessons might ultimately be those who need them the least, and who would suffer least by curtailment of their classroom instruction. And I'm hearing echoes of that very much today.

Michael Hines:

Oh, absolutely. I think that the students that we really need to be concerned about right now are students who need the school environment for remediation, who need it for extra supports, students with special needs. We need to be really thinking about how we still serve those students at a high level, even in the midst of a crisis like this. And ultimately a one size fits all approach just won't work.

Denise Pope:

This is School's In, with Denise Pope and Dan Schwartz. We will have more with Michael Hines and lessons learned from Chicago and the polio epidemic when they had to close their schools, next on SiriusXM.

[Announcer]

Denise Pope:

Welcome back to School's In, with Dan Schwartz and Denise Pope. We are talking with Mike Hines, who's an Education Historian about what went on in Chicago way back in the 1930s when they had to close the school for polio, and some of the lessons we can learn for Covid-19.

Dan Schwartz:

I like the 15-minute to keep attention span. When we talk about motivation, we usually think about motivation to get started and then motivation to stay with it. And so I don't know that for the students then 15 minutes of radio, is that exciting? Was there any way for them to keep the kids in? Maybe they went to the parents and got the parents engaged. But let's start with the radio. Was there something they did in the radio to make it better than a 15-minute lecture?

Michael Hines:

Yeah, absolutely. I think that students were used to listening to radio as a medium of entertainment. They were used to listening to stories on radio, used to listening to radio operas and entertainment programs, westerns and mysteries and things like that. So in order to compete with that, I think the school district started to adopt tactics from the entertainment world and from the commercial broadcasting world. And one of the ways that they did that was to introduce guest stars on some of their lesson broadcasts.

So in late September of 1937, a man named Carveth Wells, who was a British explorer and globe trotter, who was known for leading expeditions all throughout the world, throughout Africa and India and other exotic locales, if you were a student in Chicago, was scheduled to speak on the broadcast for specifically the third and fourth graders. And that ensured that at least some of the lessons entertained as well as informed. I think the Chicago Tribune that day reported that it expected a shrill cheer of joy from the small people when they hear that there were no multiplication exercises for the day. So I think that's another lesson we can take away from this experiment in school by radio, is that it really needs to be even more engaging and even more entertaining than a normal lesson in a classroom would be.

Denise Pope:

Well, and Mike, you are our guest, so you are the man that is supposed to draw people's attention to our show. So there's a little parallel here at SiriusXM.

Dan Schwartz:

Very good.

Michael Hines:

I'm definitely no Arctic Explorer, but I'll try.

Denise Pope:

They're flocking to hear you, but I think it's great because a lot of teachers right now are trying to figure out how to keep attention, even though you can see the video. I know one of the cool things that the students think is happening is a teacher gives a tour of their house or their room or takes them into their life in a way that they would never get to see. And it's a way to keep the kids excited and listening to whatever's going on that Zoom call.

Michael Hines:

Absolutely. I'm starting to film a short introductory video for my class that starts April 6th, just introducing students to who I am, what my background is, what I do for fun, and I'm encouraging them to send in short videos as well as a way of introducing themselves to each other. And my dog makes plenty of cameos on Zoom meetings and also on online classes. So if that's a way to pull people in, then I'm not beyond using that too.

Denise Pope:

Absolutely. Use it if you got it. So talk to us about parent engagement, because I'll tell you one of the things that [inaudible 00:21:58]-

Dan Schwartz:

So wait, wait, wait, wait. That's just sort of settling in what you said, Mike. One of the things that we want teachers to do is to know something more about kids' lives, the kids they're teaching. This is brilliant. Your solution is brilliant. We need to get every kid in America to make a three-minute video of who they are, where they come from, everybody shares. It's brilliant.

Denise Pope:

It goes back to the long history of home visits that elementary school teachers do. In some neighborhoods they're still doing it. It was a... Well, Mike, you probably know more about this than I do, but it makes a huge difference.

Michael Hines:

I think any way to establish those connections with our students is really important.

Dan Schwartz:

I'm putting this on the list of things to make happen during the recovery. I think this is really good. Anyway, Denise, I cut you off. Sorry.

Denise Pope:

Oh, it's okay. It's okay. There was just a fascinating thing about parent engagement that Mike had mentioned. And right now, parents across the United States are trying to figure out how to get their kids to pay attention, what their role is. Are they the parent? Are they the home teacher? There's a lot of angst actually, and I thought there was some interesting solutions back then. So Mike, you want to fill us in?

Michael Hines:

Sure. I think there were a couple of different ways that Chicago really made sure to try and actively engage parents and communities. So the first was a hotline that was established through the school district's central office, and it was staffed by 16 teachers and parents were encouraged to call in with questions or comments after they heard that day's radio lectures. So after logging about a thousand calls on the first day of the program, the school district actually had to add an additional five teachers to staff the phones.

And a newspaper reported that the evidence that the plan was being followed was the telephone calls of parents who were distressed if they were unable to get a certain station on the radio and some child missed a lesson, or even more so if some speaker had given the directions a little too fast and their child didn't get it. So other means of increasing and stoking parent involvement included urging families to set aside blocks of time with their students for daily lessons and daily study periods, and even offering some prizes to parents who could write about or call in about lessons that particularly interested them.

Denise Pope:

You're listening to School's In with Dan Schwartz and Denise Pope, and we're talking with Mike Hines about what happened in Chicago and they had a whole bunch of kids getting schooled by radio because they couldn't go in because of polio. And when I read about the parent prize, I was a little confused 'cause you would think that they would want to reward the student for the best student lesson or the best student essay, but here they're giving a reward to the parent. So what do you make of that?

Michael Hines:

I think it was a suggestion to keep parents involved, to keep parents looking over the shoulders of their students because in a radio lesson, in a virtual lesson, you do miss the discipline of a classroom and the community of a classroom. So I think having parents and students listening to those lessons together was far more effective than having students listen by themselves.

Dan Schwartz:

So I-

Denise Pope:

I want to know who won that prize. I want to know. I want to see what that letter said. You'll have to find that as a primary source, Mike.

Michael Hines:

I will. I will. I'm on it.

Denise Pope:

Okay, good.

Dan Schwartz:

So this sounds like such a coherent, well thought through solution and maybe it evolved over time, these features, they began to realize and include them. What was the lead time they had to develop this? Did the superintendent three months ahead of time say, "Okay, this is what we've got to do?" 'Cause right now everybody's in chaos. They don't know how long it's going to last. So I don't see these large efforts to say, "This is what it's going to be. Now let's plan now."

Denise Pope:

We have about a minute. What are some lessons that we can draw on, Mike?

Michael Hines:

I think the main lesson that we can draw on, there are several. A few are that we should keep virtual instruction short and sweet, that we should keep it entertaining, that we should try to think about access to technology, who has it and who doesn't, and how do we plan for that? And also how do we involve parents and communities? But I think the overall lesson is that as amazing as technology is, it's only a tool. It's only as good as the dedication and the resourcefulness and the adaptability of our teachers.

Denise Pope:

How long were these people listening to the radios and not in school face-to-face?

Michael Hines:

Well, in this instance, the polio epidemic only lasted a good month. So students were only out of school for about three to four weeks. I think what's unprecedented about the situation that we're in now is that of course, we don't know when it's going to end. And it's not just in one city. It's everywhere.

Denise Pope:

This is what I love about Ed historians, because we're all sitting here going, "What the heck? No one knows what's going on." And Mike's like, "Well, actually, there was this time back then and there's some lessons we could learn." Thank you so much, Mike, for being here, and thank all of you for listening to School's In with Dan Schwartz and Denise Pope. If you missed any of this episode, listen any time on demand with the SiriusXM app on iTunes and SoundCloud.