As an Afghan boy growing up in a refugee camp in northwestern Pakistan, Ismail Khan remembers his first lesson in the power of education – and its disruption. In 1996, when he was in 6^th grade, protests by Islamic militants shut down schools and government offices in the area for about four months, forcing him and his siblings to stay home.

 “Those kids whose parents were educated kept studying at home, and were kind of ok,” he recalls. “All those kids who did not study for four months were struggling, and kept struggling for a year or two to get back to the same level.”

From his formative days in the refugee camp, to his years running a school in the war zone of his native Afghanistan, to now parenting his own school-aged children in Kent, Washington, during the coronavirus pandemic, Mr. Khan’s belief in the transformational role of education has stayed with him – as has his confidence that students can eventually regain lost ground, given the right help.

As the pandemic shuts down schools across the globe, warnings abound that acute learning losses, the limits of remote schooling, and the cancelation of extracurriculars – coupled with widespread economic hardship – will create a “lost generation” of youth, particularly in developing countries where child labor persists.

Yet Mr. Khan’s experience is a reminder that disruptions to education come in many forms, from wars and natural disasters to epidemics. And while these crises have undeniably had negative impacts on education – often hitting disadvantaged populations hardest – research also shows that these impacts need not be permanent. Instead, they illustrate how adequate public resources, well directed, can make setbacks temporary. Planning, as with any contingency, can make a huge difference, say education researchers.

“A catastrophe, a pandemic is likely to have a negative impact on outcomes,” says Emma García, an education expert at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Nonetheless, she says these negative effects can be corrected after a few years if teaching resources are redirected to students who most need them.  

Ann Scott Tyson/The Christian Science Monitor

Ismail Khan, an educator from Afghanistan who is now a U.S. citizen, with his four children in their backyard in Kent, Washington, on Dec. 11, 2020. Mr. Khan used to run a school in the Afghan war zone and experienced school shutdowns as a student in Pakistan.

Coping mechanisms 

Indeed, from Afghanistan to Sierra Leone to the United States, there are some reasons for optimism – not only that students can recover academically, but that they can gain healthy coping mechanisms for future challenges.

 “Your ability to cope with distress, your resilience, your sense of belonging to a community – there are many life skills that kids may have been able to develop,” says Dr. García. “If kids were able to develop resilience, that is going to be an asset for the rest of their lives and also when they go back to school.”

Student assessments need to move beyond test scores to capture such skills, so that educators can reinforce and leverage students’ social and emotional capabilities that may have improved during the pandemic. “Resilience, tolerance, understanding, sympathy, creativity – those are assets,” she says.

Systemic changes

Another overarching lesson is that educational crises – even those caused by violent regime change – can create opportunities for systemic reform that might not otherwise exist. “The post-conflict reconstruction environment offers significant opportunities for policy reform and system change,” says a 2005 World Bank report that draws on a database of 52 countries affected by war since 1990.

This has been true of the war in Afghanistan. Under the Taliban regime of Islamic fundamentalists from 1996 to 2001, education was severely restricted for females, girls’ schools were closed, and madrassas or mosque schools provided most education. In the years after the U.S.-led coalition overthrew the Taliban, school enrollment surged from about 1.2 million students to top 9 million, including more than 3.5 million girls, according to the Afghan Ministry of Higher Education. 

After returning to Afghanistan in 2001, Mr. Khan in 2003 helped found and later manage a private, coeducational school for English and computer skills in the eastern city of Jalalabad that thrived amidst fighting and protests against U.S. forces. After closing earlier this year due to COVID-19, the school, which Mr. Khan’s brother runs, is now open.

Research suggests that amid the negative disruption of war to society and political institutions, communities that are hungry for change and renewal in education can overcome bureaucratic resistance. In Kosovo, for example, administrative breakdown during the 1998-99 war contributed to “fairly radical reforms in terms of community involvement in school governance,” according to the World Bank report.

Ebola and Sierra Leone

Lessons from countries hit by past epidemics are also revealing.

Sierra Leone – a country also torn apart by a 1990s civil war – was hit hard in 2014 by Ebola. Children were especially affected. About 20% of Ebola cases were in youths under 15, thousands of children were orphaned, and schools were closed for about 9 months.

Vickie Remoe, a native of Sierra Leone, TV host, and education advocate, took part in projects to help students recover lost ground.

“The big lesson for education from Sierra Leone to the world is that even in a place with a weak educational system like Sierra Leone, students are resilient,” says Ms. Remoe, who spent six months in Sierra Leone during the current pandemic.

One successful initiative during the Ebola school closures, for example, was an educational radio program that was able to reach up to 90% of at-home students. The initiative was reactivated in May when the pandemic forced schools to close again.

Accelerated education programs tailored to help struggling students catch up have also seen some success in Sierra Leone. One effort, piloted soon after the Ebola epidemic in 2016, helped 720 girls and boys aged 10 to 16 who were out of school to complete elementary school in just three years, and pass national primary school exams. The program enrolled many girls who had dropped out – or been barred from school by the government after becoming pregnant – during the Ebola crisis.

Educational rebounds after Katrina 

Educational rebounds have also been tracked by researchers following natural disasters such as Hurricane Katrina, which hit New Orleans in 2005. Students affected by Katrina did catch up, although it took nearly two full years to make up for the lost instructional time, experts say.  

A key discovery from Katrina, research shows, is the importance of both ongoing teacher training and matching the most effective teachers with the most vulnerable students during the catch-up period.

Indeed, teachers may themselves benefit from an enhanced program of online training during crises, which will in turn help boost their motivation, experts say.

Katrina also showed how correctly matching teachers and students depends on a broad and detailed assessment of where students have fallen behind, coupled with a targeted menu of interventions, rather than a cookie cutter approach, Dr. García says.

Helping struggling students could involve steps ranging from an expanded school schedule and summer programs, to smaller classes, teacher aids and tutors, and counseling, she says.

Hopeful signs for some students 

Some initial U.S. testing results during the pandemic offer signs of optimism. “We found that for the most part, kids were still making gains in both reading and math” says Beth Tarasawa, who heads a research team at the Northwest Evaluation Association, an Oregon nonprofit focused on student assessments. The study looked at 4.4 million students in grades three to eight.

Still, Dr. Tarasawa cautioned that a higher percentage of children than usual – 25% – were missing from the latest testing sample, and those children were disproportionately students of color, poor-performing, and from high-poverty schools. “While there are signs for optimism, it’s still very early and we have much more to go through in weathering the storm,” she says.

Research in the U.S. is ongoing, with one national study by online learning company Amplify finding more students in grades K-5 needing intensive intervention for literacy skills, especially 1st graders.

Mr. Khan agrees with the concerns and worries that with a full-time job, he lacks adequate time to support his four children with online learning. “By the time they are in school I am at work, and when I come back at 7 o’clock they go to sleep,” he says, adding that his wife speaks only limited English.

Perhaps what is needed most, he says, is patience by all concerned. “They will get back on track,” he says, “but it will take time.”

Editor’s note: As a public service, we have removed our paywall for all pandemic-related stories.

Kenzo Tribouillard/Reuters

President of the European Commission Ursula von der Leyen appears on a screen to deliver a speech during the Climate Ambition Summit 2020 video conference meeting in Brussels on Dec. 12, 2020.

In 2019, European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen boldly declared “Europe’s man on the moon” moment, as she announced the continent’s plans to be carbon neutral by 2050. The European Green New Deal would, among other bold proposals, halve Europe’s greenhouse gas emissions by 2030, decarbonize the energy sector, and influence environmental standards internationally by raising Europe’s own.

But the European Union produces only 10% of the world’s greenhouse gas emissions, so having what is widely considered the world’s most ambitious climate change policy plan isn't enough to fix the problem.

And so to realize its green ambitions, the EU intends to reach beyond its borders, to bring along countries including the United States and the globe’s No. 1 polluter, China. The challenge is determining who can be coaxed to come along for the ride, and what levers Europe can pull – such as a carbon tax on imported goods – to bring them on its turbulent journey towards a greener future.

“Stringent climate policy will create winners and losers in society,” says Sonja Peterson, a climate economist at the Kiel Institute for the World Economy. “Industries will have to change, new fields of work will be created. But, ultimately, EU climate policy is of little help alone. It will be very important to get the U.S. and China on board to reach temperature targets [of the Paris accord]. Though, I think it can be helpful to show how decarbonization can work in Europe first.”

“We have to take everyone with us”

Europe’s leadership intends to leave no person behind as it attempts to overhaul nearly every sector, from transportation to agriculture to energy, via regulation and legislation.

“The biggest challenge within the next couple of years will be to design this transformation in a way that brings people along,” says Vicki Duscha, business climate policy analyst at Fraunhofer Institute for Systems and Innovation Research. “We have the goal to take everyone with us. If we do it right, there will be new jobs created. This transformation won’t be possible without the people.”

Ironically, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented an opportunity. Not only has the world-at-a-standstill triggered in a sharp reduction in carbon emissions, but it has allowed the EU to roll out a stimulus package in which roughly €275 billion ($335 billion) has been dedicated to a recovery effort that will also combat the effects of climate change.

“In principle, I think Europe’s goals are reachable,” says Dr. Peterson of the Kiel Institute. “Many studies show, with which mixture of technologies, we can become completely carbon-neutral. But in reality, this is a huge challenge and we’re far from the goal. The steps that are missing are much more demanding than what’s already been achieved.”

Lenora Chu

Heike Fesinger (left) and her partner, Udo, march in a demonstration to protest Daimler's decision to phase out combustion engine production at the Mercedes-Benz plant in Marienfelde, a locality of Berlin. They have worked at the plant for 38 and 40 years, respectively.

The path is clear in certain industries such as energy, but more challenging in emissions-heavy sectors such as agriculture and transportation.

“Liquid fuels seem to be the best way to decarbonize transportation. Yet, we have ideas about a climate-neutral liquid gas, but we’re far away from generating the amounts necessary,” says Dr. Duscha. “The same holds for agriculture; there are only a handful of technological possibilities to reduce methane, and we’ll also have to change our dietary habits. That’s hard to address from a political point of view.”

And the transition could spark a public backlash as it starts to affect jobs. It already is at the world’s oldest Mercedes-Benz plant, in the Marienfelde region of Berlin. This year, Daimler management announced plans to phase out combustion engine production there as the company turns toward electric motors. The factory, which Daimler has run since 1902, might be downsized, prompting hundreds of workers to protest earlier this month.

“You can’t just stop using the internal combustion engine right away,” says Heike Fesinger, who, along with her partner, Udo, was marching on a cold, overcast day. She started at the plant as a lathe operator 38 years ago, and is now a test-equipment instructor. “This factory shouldn’t be closed down just because some CEOs missed the boat for e-mobility. The transformation needs to go slower.”

Setting standards, even outside Europe

Even if Europe convinces its own people to embrace the green path, it remains to be seen whether other countries will follow along. The U.S. has a stated goal of becoming carbon neutral by 2050, while China this year announced plans to peak CO2 emissions in the year 2030, and aims to become carbon-neutral by 2060.

“The three biggest emitters are China, the U.S., and the EU, with everyone else trailing in their wake,” says Jeremy Shapiro, research director at the European Council on Foreign Relations. “Any sort of three-way agreement with them would set the tone.” That might include, say, setting a standard for assessing the carbon content for exported industrial goods.

Yet the U.S. policy-making environment is incredibly polarized, and America is emerging from four years under a president who refused to acknowledge climate science. Meanwhile China, for decades the world’s factory floor, can’t easily curb emissions in an economy still so reliant on a coal-powered industrial sector.

If other countries do not follow along, Europe may need to deploy its unmatched regulatory capability, and the mechanisms that spring from that, to increase its sovereignty and ability to act, say experts.

That includes a border carbon adjustment, which the EU intends to finalize in 2021. Such an adjustment is most likely to take shape as a tax levied on imports into the EU, pegged to the amount of greenhouse gases emitted in their manufacture. This “carbon tax” is being discussed in part because international cooperation might fall short; it would attempt to subject international industry to the same terms of competition as those inside Europe.

Under such a scheme, Daimler would derive little benefit from shuttering an engine factory in high-regulation Germany, moving production to a more-permissive China, and importing engines back into Europe. Simultaneously, such a tax would hamper foreign manufacturers from selling “dirty” products to Europe. In other words, a carbon tax helps level the playing field.

“Conceptually it makes a lot of sense,” says Mr. Shapiro of ECFR. “Because if you don’t do something like this, the carbon would essentially get exported abroad. But it’s a very, very difficult thing to implement.”

That’s not only because of the diplomatic tensions that would result, or the uncertainty around whether such a scheme would be compliant with World Trade Organization rules. There’s also the intricate logistics of determining the carbon content of an import. “It might require insight into six different countries’ supply chains before you even get to Europe,” says Mr. Shapiro.

Most exciting for the near term, say experts, is the industrial policy Europe would deploy in the race to develop green technologies. In certain sectors, including renewable energies, Europe has already shown the green choice can be low-cost enough to be profitable.

“That’s giving people money,” says Mr. Shapiro. “That’s always a bit easier to push through.”

When Ashley Guevara and her husband Alfredo Guevara feel overwhelmed by managing their full-time jobs while raising 2-year-old twins during a pandemic, they breathe huge sighs of relief that they moved in with extended family earlier this year. 

The couple and their children live with Mr. Guevara’s mother in the same house where he grew up in Somerville, Massachusetts. Next door in a connected house live Mr. Guevara’s aunt and cousin. Life flows fluidly between the two spaces, with family members sharing meals, watching TV together, and caring for the twins. 

“We moved in two weeks pre-quarantine,” in early March, says Ms. Guevara. “I don’t know what we would have done if we were still in a tiny apartment with growing toddlers, working from home.”

Although the benefits of living with family are especially clear during a pandemic – with in-home child care, companionship, and a lowered cost of living – the Guevaras decided to move into their multigenerational house before they’d heard of the coronavirus. And like a growing number of others living in a similar situation, they plan to stick with it after the pandemic and economic crisis fade. 

“I love that my kids get to spend so much time with their family,” says Ms. Guevara, a social worker who works from home during the pandemic. Her husband is a nurse at a children’s hospital. 

A peak in an ongoing trend

Across the United States, families are living together in record numbers as they respond to public health and economic calamities. The number of 18- to 29-year-olds living with their parents this year rose from 47% in February to 52% in July, according to the Pew Research Center, surpassing the previous peak set during the Great Depression. Families living together in multigenerational households also accelerated after the Great Recession of 2008. 

“We see families turning to each other in difficult times,” says Jaia Peterson Lent, deputy executive director of Generations United, a nonprofit based in Washington, D.C., that promotes connections among people of different ages. “During COVID we’re seeing families come together for a variety of reasons – it may be caregiving, it may be a way for social connections during a time of lots of isolation.” 

Yet American families aren’t only moving in together during troubled times. The percentage of the U.S. population living in multigenerational families has grown steadily since the 1980s and hit a record 20% of the population – 64 million people – in 2016, according to a 2018 Pew Research Center report. (Pew defines multigenerational households as those with two or more adult generations or with grandparents and grandchildren under age 25.) 

Experts believe the long-term increase in multigenerational households is due to a combination of demographic changes, falling wages, and rising student debt. In addition, cultural changes are shifting the way Americans perceive the role of family, with many questioning whether living as private, independent, nuclear families is still attainable – or an ideal worth striving for. 

“We reflect often back on 2009, and what we saw then was many families were coming together out of necessity. They stayed together by choice because of the desire to maintain those connections,” says Ms. Peterson Lent of Generations United. 

Benefits for young adults

Most of the multigenerational families interviewed for this article – across races, ethnicities, income brackets, and geographic locales – said the benefits of living together outweigh the drawbacks, and they have no plans to change in the near future. A few are waiting until family members are on better financial footing before moving out or feel they need to branch out on their own soon for more independence. 

Caitlin Ochs/Reuters

Bonnie Coughlin helps her grandson Caden with schoolwork at their home in Gilbertsville, Pennsylvania, Oct. 26, 2020.

Lindsay Brooks, a 26-year-old from Forestville, California, who finished paying off student loans from college and graduate school this fall, says she paid the loans “10 times faster” because she’s lived at home rent-free with her mom for the past three years. With a recent job promotion and a boyfriend, however, Ms. Brooks is thinking about leaving her childhood home. 

“It definitely has been worth it,” she says. “But I think it’s important for people to set a timeline, and not get caught down that rabbit hole of not having to pay for anything, and focus on moving on and moving out.”  

Adult children living at home for practical and financial reasons is nothing new. Earlier in American history, family life centered around a farm or family enterprise, says Steven Ruggles, a professor of history and population studies at the University of Minnesota. Multigenerational families were common because at least one child would remain living in their parents’ home to inherit the family farm or business. 

The recent rebound in multigenerational living “has mostly to do with changing characteristics of younger generations,” says Dr. Ruggles, such as declining marriage rates, a rising number of unemployed or underemployed young adults, and increasing racial and ethnic diversity.  

“I think it’s been pretty consistent over the last 150 years that most intergenerational co-residence of older people with their adult children has been intended to aid the children, not the old people,” says Dr. Ruggles. 

Family closeness and financial support

The number of individuals living in multigenerational households is growing across racial and ethnic groups, although white Americans remain less likely to live with extended family. A Pew Research Center analysis of 2016 census data shows that 29% of Asian households in the U.S. are multigenerational, followed by 27% of Hispanic households, 26% of Black households, and 16% of white households. Foreign-born Americans are more likely than those born in the U.S. to live in multigenerational families. 

Wilma Walker lives in Florissant, Missouri, in a four-generation household with her husband, her 97-year old mother, her adult daughter, and two grandchildren. She says that within the Black community in the U.S., she’s “always known it to be like a support in our culture. When our parents get older, one of the children in the family automatically makes plans for that.” 

Ms. Walker’s adult daughter moved back home five years ago after her marriage dissolved, and the family has stayed together, both for financial reasons and because they enjoy living together. 

“You have all of these generations who are able to pour [wisdom and love] into each other,” says Ms. Walker, who is a minister. The hardest part is blending the needs of the oldest and youngest members of the house, with Ms. Walker having to remind her grandkids not to run too loudly over her mother’s bedroom.

Courtesy of the Walker family

Wilma Walker and her family decorate a Christmas tree in their home in Florissant, Missouri, in late November 2020. Ms. Walker lives with four generations of family, pictured from left: Evelyn Whitfield, Howard Walker, Maleeya Nimrod, Wilma Walker, Andrea Walker, and Amir Nimrod.

Balancing needs – and risks – across generations has taken on new meaning during the pandemic. A 2017 study by researchers at Columbia University Mailman School of Public Health found some health benefits to multigenerational living but also cautioned that overcrowded houses can be a risk factor for spreading diseases among family members. 

Victor Gonzalez from Lawrence, Massachusetts, worries about bringing the new coronavirus home because he works outside the house at a labeling company. But he doesn’t want to move out of the apartment where he lives with his parents, grandmother, and younger brother, because he knows his parents need the financial support he provides. 

“It was really hard [to move back home] because the last thing I wanted to do was be out and come back, but then I saw that they need the help,” says Mr. Gonzalez, who moved home last year after separating from his former partner. He pays half of the rent and helps with groceries and bills. His mom watches his young son during the day, and his dad is trying to start a new business after selling his taxicab company. 

“I don’t have as much privacy, living with my parents,” Mr. Gonzalez says. “But it’s all a matter of time until I see they’re settled. I want them to not have to worry about ... being short on rent.”

Planning for multigenerational families

Last spring, a highly read article in The Atlantic called “The Nuclear Family Was a Mistake,” by David Brooks, argued that shifts over the 20th century from bigger, extended families to smaller, nuclear families led to a family structure that “liberates the rich and ravages the working-class and the poor.” 

“Among the highly educated, family patterns are almost as stable as they were in the 1950s; among the less fortunate, family life is often utter chaos. There’s a reason for that divide: Affluent people have the resources to effectively buy extended family, in order to shore themselves up,” Mr. Brooks wrote. He suggests reprioritizing multigenerational families or creating “forged families” – a term coined by Daniel Burns at the University of Dallas – by developing friends who act like family. 

Government and businesses can support multigenerational families by changing local zoning laws to allow more houses built to accommodate separate spaces for multiple family members. A survey by John Burns Real Estate Consulting found that 44% of new homebuyers want to be able to accommodate their aging parents someday. 

Congress could also provide more funding for the Older Americans Act, which was reauthorized this year and provides for a National Family Caregiver Support Program for those caring for qualifying family members, as well as grants for multigenerational programs such as joint adult and child day care centers. 

Strategies for thriving across generations

For those living in multigenerational families, it takes effort to smooth frictions over household chores or differences in personality traits. But the effort is worth it says Ms. Walker from the four-generation Missouri household. She advises people to be patient and think about how they care for their family members.

“When you’re living in a house, it’s an opportunity to be selfish – it’s your kitchen, your pot, your TV,” she says. “But it feels horrible to feel not wanted, and maybe that person needs you right then because they don’t have a place to go. That’s the way I like to live in my house – I like to serve. I get a rewarding feeling from that.”

Setting clear expectations regarding shared and individual time, finances, and chores helps too, says Ms. Peterson Lent of Generations United. “We recommend having time for a family meeting to talk about boundaries and ground rules and get buy-in from family members.” 

For Ms. Guevara, a white American who married into a Filipino American family, the shift in cultural attitudes toward family has been beneficial. She grew up in a small family without many kin nearby. When she traveled with her husband to the Philippines, she realized that his family had recreated their original living situation in the U.S., with family close together in the same Massachusetts neighborhood.  

“There’s this communal way of living there where nobody’s too far away. It’s very typical for families of multigenerations to be in one household,” she says. “I just think there’s something really amazing about that and something that’s really lost on a lot of people here because there’s this norm of moving halfway across the country.” 

Ms. Guevara is quick to add that she doesn’t think it’s wrong for people to move far from family, but it’s a different cultural approach. Close family ties are “something that I really appreciate about ... his culture, and I’m excited to have my kids be a part of it,” she says. 

Courtesy of Maisie Sparks

Maisie Sparks turned a frightening traffic stop into an important lesson for all involved.

This was not the first time the flashing lights of an officer of the law had appeared in my rearview mirror. But it was the first time I refused the invitation to pull over. It was one of those split-second decisions that people like me have to make whenever we engage with law enforcement officers. My encounter, thankfully, didn’t reach the fatal threshold of a Darrius Stewart, Philando Castile, or Marcellis Stinnette. But people like me live with a constant fear that the potential is there.

Once I left the scene of the incident, I could have just paid the $164 fine or taken the four-hour, $49 traffic safety class and been done with it. But for reasons I still don’t fully understand, those options left me feeling violated. And even though I had no expectation that something good would come of entering the halls of justice – in fact, there would be added court costs to pay if I lost the case – I felt better just thinking about having my say.

The morning of my court appearance, I realized that going to court would be a scary and intimidating experience, so I needed to write down what had been rolling around in my head or I’d stumble over my words. After the police officer, who was white, gave his version of the incident, here’s what I had to say:

Good afternoon, Your Honor.

I was not following too closely. I don’t know why I or anyone else would follow a state police officer too closely. And, more significant, I don’t think following too closely is the reason I got a ticket.

On that evening, I was in the right lane; the police officer was in front of me at what was a safe distance. We were not even going the speed limit. I would be getting off the interstate soon, and I didn’t want to speed up and pass the officer or miss my exit. The officer moved to the left lane, then beside me for a little longer than seemed normal, and then behind me, … following me at the same distance I had been following him. I thought nothing of it until he turned his lights on. And this is when things got interesting.

I didn’t know why the officer turned his lights on me. I wasn’t speeding. My license plate sticker wasn’t expired. My lights were working. In that moment, everything I know about being black in America kicked in, and I decided I was not going to stop at night on an unlighted stretch of road for anyone, including and perhaps certainly not for a police officer. I truly feared for my life. …

… I didn’t get a ticket for following too closely; I got a ticket because I didn’t pull over, and I didn’t pull over because I didn’t know what might happen to me on a dark highway.

I pulled over when I reached the exit with lights and people and I felt safe. By the time I got to my exit, another police car was there, and that caused additional trauma.

When the officer came to my car, he said I could have caused an accident. I had no idea what he was talking about. I said, … “I didn’t know who you were.” What did I mean by that? Yes, I knew he was a police officer, but I didn’t know what kind of police officer he was.

Then he quoted the section of a traffic code that I had violated and told me I was following too closely. I was shocked. I couldn’t believe this was what the lights were all about.

Why do I share this with you? First, because I wasn’t following too closely. Second, even if I were, I could have been given a warning. And third, these are the kinds of minor and major situations that people like me find ourselves in on a daily basis. It’s a situation where grace could be applied, but instead there is punitive and financial judgment. … For far too many people like me, an innocent traffic stop has ended tragically. And, yes, I know, for many a police officer, an innocent traffic stop has ended in tragedy as well.

This, Your Honor, is a “he said, she said” case. And, what he – a police officer – says carries more weight than what this she has to say. I understand and respect that. I respect the law, [and] I am grateful for the dangerous work our law enforcement officers do each day. …

In our binary world, we are divided into winners and losers. Ruling in my favor makes the officer a loser, and ruling in his favor makes me the loser. I’d like to offer a third way.

By the end of our encounter, I believe both the officer and I realized that we were not the people we thought each other was. That was the win for me and the officer, but more importantly, it was also a win for our society. Being in proximity with others is what changes hearts and minds. And that was the gift of the encounter. I was in fear, but what I didn’t know is, the officer was living in fear also. The second or third time he came up to my car, I said I wanted to get out of the car to stretch my legs, but he said I couldn’t and something to the effect that he meets a lot of people and he doesn’t know what they will do.

I was shocked. By then, he knew I was a 64-year-old woman driving a 13-year-old Volvo. But he was in fear of me? There is something dangerously wrong in our society when good people feel this way about each other. Your Honor, your ruling today can help us all to walk away from here with a new, grace-filled narrative about the scales of justice, or we can continue to react to our unbalanced fears. Your Honor, I’m asking you to dismiss this case. Why? Because I wasn’t following too closely, and justice, in this case, can be better meted out as mercy. Thank you, Your Honor.

What happened next was as shocking as seeing the trooper’s lights behind me on that dark night on a dark road. The state trooper walked over to the prosecuting attorney. They shared a brief, private conversation, and then the prosecuting attorney turned to the judge and said, “Your Honor, the state would like to dismiss this case.” She did.

There was nothing in my racial understanding of American life that would have led me to believe that the officer who gave me the ticket would seek its dismissal. But regardless of the past and no matter what our fears, sometimes we touch the heart of another human being when we share our own.

Maisie Sparks is the author of “Holy Shakespeare!” and other works.

Reuters

Researchers work around the Chang'e-5 lunar return capsule carrying moon samples next to a Chinese national flag, after it landed in northern China's Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region December 17, 2020.

More than a half-century ago the United States set out to send humans to the moon. That era also saw huge domestic upheaval over the expansion of civil rights to African Americans. It also saw the pursuit of a questionable war in Vietnam that deeply divided the nation. Yet in 1969 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin walked on the moon. 

In 2020 the COVID-19 pandemic, along with the racial protests and economic hardships that have accompanied it, has presented its own major challenge. 

Today space is being explored in a different fashion from that earlier era when the U.S. government flexed its economic and scientific muscle to defeat the Soviet Union in a race to the moon. No longer transfixed on that mission, explorers are moving ahead on a variety of fronts, from satellites in near-Earth orbit, to more lunar exploration, to visiting asteroids, to sending probes to Mars and elsewhere in the solar system.

And the U.S. is hardly alone anymore. Other nations’ ambitious space programs are bearing fruit. Recently China and Japan both scored impressive achievements in space: An unmanned Chinese mission returned soil samples to Earth from a previously unexplored part of the moon. And a Japanese craft landed on an asteroid and successfully brought back rock and gas samples. Scientists will need many years to extract all the knowledge about our solar system gained from these expeditions.

“Space is for everybody,” said Christa McAuliffe, the American educator and astronaut who died in the space shuttle Challenger disaster in 1986. “That’s our new frontier out there, and it’s everybody’s business to know about space.” Her goal had been to help explain the larger meaning of space exploration to the world.

Even the strategy for how to explore space is undergoing a real-life test. China is making rapid strides using five-year plans and careful, incremental steps – in some ways reminiscent of the highly focused, top-down U.S. “moon shot” of the 1960s. 

Space exploration in the U.S. today is a mélange of government-private collaborations and several strictly private projects, including plans to visit Mars and space tourism, the perfect gift for the adventurous billionaire. 

The Biden administration will have to decide where to put space exploration on its list of priorities. If all still goes according to (admittedly ambitious) current plans, Americans will return to the moon in 2024, the first human visitors since the last Apollo mission departed 52 years earlier. One of the new explorers is expected to be the first woman to set foot there. 

“The Earth is the cradle of humanity, but mankind cannot stay in the cradle forever,” early 20th-century Russian scientist Konstantin Tsiolkovsky famously advised. While earthly challenges rightly demand humanity’s serious attention, thoughts will always reach out into the universe with a longing to know it better.

Looking into the future, the founder of the Monitor, Mary Baker Eddy, wrote more than a century ago of a time when “The astronomer will no longer look up to the stars, – he will look out from them upon the universe.”

Whatever our earthly woes, that future of expansive possibilities will always beckon.