18 January

SAT scores are used in the US mostly to select people for college admisison. They’ve been in free fall since the pandemic began (circled in red). I don’t know about your experience, but in workplaces I feel a real checking-out since Covid began. People have gone back to what they were doing in their lives pre-Covid, but the heart isn’t in it. There’s a loss of real commitment to or passion for things. I think that’s what’s happened in schools too. We had a lot of years of routine life, going to school or work, and then something disrupted that routine and opened a gap in our thinking and feeling. Suddenly we questioned what was the point of it all, we’d seen a bit of life without that routine. Pandemics and other catastrophes always reboot societies. That’s what I think we’re seeing. A reboot across all of life. We’re going through the motions, but something is broken. Also why the old status quo was so desperate to ‘get back to work’, and invented fantasties like ‘living with’ pandemics. It sensed the danger.