Jeffrey Young produces and hosts Ed Surge podcasts and is managing editor of EdSurge. He interviewed me in January 2022. Here is an edited version of that interview.

It turns out emergency remote instruction is far from new. Back in 1937, when a polio outbreak plagued the U.S., Chicago Public Schools produced lessons that were broadcast on local radio stations.

The system helped keep students learning during a three-week shut-down. But it didn’t lead to a revolution in radio teaching. Will things be different now in a health crisis that is longer, and the technology of the internet and iPads and smartphones are more robust?

Questions about what we can learn from the history of education are familiar to Larry Cuban, a longtime education historian and school reformer. He looks back over nearly a century of change in his new book, “Confessions of a School Reformer.”

The book is part…