By the first of August, 2020 — amidst the growth of COVID-19 hotspots around the country — American media began reporting plans to reopen schools and universities or keep them shut.

Despite the good intentions and hard work of parents, teachers, administrators, and civil servants, the unknown of COVID-19 has made already fractious education systems impossible to move forward with certainty.

How could it be otherwise? So many stakeholders: Parents, students, teachers, administrators, state government officials, unions, and school choice advocates — all wanting it “their way.”

This 1914 photo of the Cedar Bluff School, near the hamlet of Alabam, Arkansas, shows that schooling was not so complicated in earlier times. A farmstead, some distance from tiny Alabam, is where my father and five siblings grew up. My aunt and two uncles are shown in this charming photo; my father was only three years old in September 1914, so he was too young for school. The single instructor taught all grade levels in this one-room schoolhouse with only meager teaching resources.

Ultimately, all six Kendall children became well-spoken adults who excelled in various walks of life. All made positive contributions to their communities, most without the benefit of higher education. By any standard, they were well educated, thanks to their own initiatives.

It's a pipedream that today's complicated school systems could learn anything from the one-room-schoolhouse experience, but it is reasonable to expect the 2020 pandemic to shine some light on those schools that managed to reopen safely and on time. The biggest beneficiaries will be the students and their parents. The heroes will be the teachers and administrators who did the hard work to make it possible.

It is not too much to ask that from the horrible experience of COVID-19, we learn something significant enough to inform and improve the future of American education.