Explaining that the life of a city can best be experienced by paying attention to “how the people in it work, how they love, and how they die”, Camus ( 1948) describes the succession of stages the unsuspecting citizens experience as isolated and at first seemingly unimportant events start to disrupt everyday life-rats spitting blood and dying in the streets, the rapid appearance and spread of the plague across the city, a declared state of pandemic, and the tragedy that ensues as a complete lockdown brings normal life to a halt. The novel, organized into five parts, recounts the experiences of townsfolk from the perspective of a young doctor, Bernard Rieux. As the novel shows, tragic events create a demand for quick action, so a few practical principles for curriculum decision-making are also offered.Īlbert Camus’ novel The Plague ( La Peste) describes the extraordinary events that take place during a sudden pandemic that locks down a rather ordinary town, the city of Oran in French Algeria.

At the same time, this reading is not oblivious to the practical needs around decision-making on the part of educational policymakers, administrators, and teachers. Through this reading, it claims that even within the tragic reality of its effects, the present pandemic might bring to the fore the notion of an existential kind of learning-one that is deeply personal, that cannot be programmed or learned from direct teaching, and that connects us in relevant ways to the lives of others. This article explores the potential educational aspect of the pandemic by framing the discussion in an exegetical reading of Camus’ novel. What lessons can be learned from the pandemic we are experiencing right now? While Covid-19 is often discussed from a biological perspective, the magnitude of the tragedy raises questions far beyond the confines of the natural/medical sciences, questions about humanity, our limits and possibilities, and the transcendent.

Albert Camus addresses this traumatic dimension in his 1947 novel The Plague, in which he reserves a rather puzzling statement for the closing paragraph: A plague never disappears, he wrote, but can lie dormant only to reappear once again “for the education of men”. The Covid-19 pandemic can be read as an eruption of the Real: a traumatic event that overwhelms our capacity for symbolization and exposes the fragility of the imaginary.

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