This Saturday edition of "The Daily Signal Podcast" features a discussion with Andy Smarick, senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, on how education is evolving after the COVID-19 pandemic.

School lockdowns, masking, and other restrictions have affected how parents across America think about their children's education. COVID-19 accelerated certain trends that already were afoot, such as the demand for increasing school choice opportunities outside public schools.

Moreover, parts of America have been the scene of tremendous battles over the content of curriculum, particularly regarding critical race theory, which parents were shocked to find in their children's instruction.

So what's next?

Smarick observes that COVID-19 launched "small learning communities really oriented around the needs of families and kids" because restrictions during the pandemic resulted in "50 million students [who] suddenly had to find something different because their schools were shut down."

"And that's when we saw the rise of pods, hubs, and hybrid homeschooling and also microschooling," he says. "This is just a wonderful Tocquevillian response, spontaneous order to a calamitous situation where all these parents were saying, 'Heavens, we just need new options for our kids because they're not getting anything and I still have to work.'"

The real question is whether this revolution in education will continue. 

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