I like Paul’s quote, “Providing students with the knowledge to think critically about a range of important issues is not evidence ofacademic obsession,’ but a desire for deeper understanding.” “One hundred years ago, and 50 years before that, education in Germany was idealized. A much better starting point is the World Bank 2020 report, “The Pandemic Jolts in KOVID-19 Education,” which highlights the collateral damage to school systems around the world. Education visionaries, school change theorists, and their academic allies were quick to offer familiar ideas filled with “COVID-19” and accompanied by the tantalizing rhapsody of “rebuilding better than it was.” The shocks of the KOVID-19 pandemic revealed the fragility of the modern, centralized, bureaucratic, top-down educational state that I defined and analyzed in my 2020 book, The State of the System. If we are facing a “generational disaster,” it is time to rethink the challenges of K-12 education. Providing students with the knowledge to think critically about a range of important issues is not an example of “academic obsession,” but a quest for deeper understanding. Critical thinking remains the Holy Grail of K-12 education, but it is hard to imagine that it is not grounded in subject knowledge. I applaud Paul’s suggestion that “teaching children to read and do math is critical to social justice during a pandemic.” Recall neuroscient Mark Seidenberg’s comment in his book, Language at the Speed of Light, that when some educators faced criticism about how to teach reading, “they didn’t change their practice, they changed the subject.” A post-pandemic future, they argued, would be at odds with two mutually exclusive viewpoints: social equity and student welfare, or austerity and academic standards–good vs. evil. I would like to conclude the sentence in paragraph 6: “Student welfare and academic excellence are also not necessarily on the agenda.” BC Focus on Learning: Rising to the Global Challenge was broadcast live for guests. Moreover, the Six C’s have proven difficult to measure, to the point where even their proponents recognize that it is better to focus on more measurable academic content and discipline, especially in reading and mathematics.