This winter, I interviewed dozens of teachers across the country, from all kinds of districts and at all levels of experience. Most of the teachers worked at public schools, though a few were private school teachers or charter school teachers. I contacted many of the teachers through the r/Teachers Reddit board, which has over 300,000 members.

In those conversations, it became clear that the pandemic didn’t simply create but heightened problems that existed long before. Parents struggled to improvise childcare in the absence of in-person school, a situation that strained families and exacerbated inequality; some kids had quiet homes and access to Wi-Fi, some did not. Some families could form learning “pods” and afford extra instruction for their children, while most could not. Remote learning caused a severe setback in many kids’ academic progress and damaged the mental health of some. It also highlighted the fact that schools serve many purposes beyond academic learning, like providing meals for kids and identifying children who qualify for social services or special education. The debate over school closures devolved into one side calling teachers lazy and narcissistic, and the other side accusing parents of selfishly wanting free daycare while they worked. Once teachers’ unions got involved and began pushing against reopenings in the summer of 2020, the vitriol boiled over on both sides. Democrat-run states where teachers’ unions are strong tended to delay reopening, while Republican states opened. Some teachers in red states I spoke with had been teaching in person since the fall of 2020.

Despite these wide geographic and logistical differences, however, nearly all of the teachers I interviewed spoke about similar problems in their schools that touch every aspect of our culture and society, from technology dependence to stats-obsessed bureaucracy.