Why School Resilience Should Be Critical for the Post-Earthquake Recovery of Communities in Divided Societies

Introduction

Of all natural disasters, earthquakes are the least predictable and the most destructive to the built environment. Moreover, they are disruptive to social services in general and to schools, students and educational processes in particular, with numerous negative effects. The collapse of school facilities during an earthquake could result in a mass-casualty event that has a marked effect on the life and hope of thousands of children. In addition, a long school closure period and the disruption of educational processes make severe impacts, as they can lead to the deprivation of the fundamental right to education for millions of children and place their future at risk. Earthquakes have been responsible for child deaths, as well as physical and psychological injuries to children and interruption of education delivery services. Although disaster recovery is a process that focuses on restoring social, physical, and economic functioning to its pre-disaster level, the resilience of schools can be crucial for community recovery in these circumstances. The ability of a society to recover from a disaster is directly dependent on the resilience level of its social service facilities and their effectiveness in restoring the continuity of service delivery, post-disaster and pre-disaster societal cohesion.

Societies are generally pluralistic, and have a mixture of racial, ethnic, cultural and religious diversities. Such diversity in cohesive societies can become a source of strength, and can contribute to the post-disaster resilience of affected communities. However, in many divided societies with sectarian tension and socioeconomic and political marginalization, social cohesion becomes a challenge, and can affect the resilience of such societies with regard to rapid disaster recovery. Poor political and educational policies, and a lack of practices that can improve social integration and reduce political and economic marginalization, mean that a strong sectarian identity prevails over the national identity, and loyalty to sects or ethnicities in these societies is usually stronger than loyalty to the state. This article illustrates the important role that schools can play in promoting social cohesion, and shows that the implementation of seismic structural strengthening of school buildings and the readiness of school administrators to shift to an online teaching and learning approach during school dysfunctions or closures are fundamental to building school resilience and to the overall post-earthquake recovery process of affected communities.

Reasons for Creating Resilient Schools

Resilience is an essential component of any disaster prevention strategy, and its main role is to empower communities, to mitigate the impacts of disasters and to ensure a rapid recovery. The importance of resilience lies in its need to increase the capacity of individuals and communities, such that they can withstand and/or adapt to a wide range of risks (Frankenberger, Constas, Neson, & Starr, 2014). Previous studies have attempted to provide various definitions of the term resilience, due to its importance in disaster preparedness and the community response and recovery from numerous adversities. As such, Wildavsky (1991) defined community resilience as “the capacity to cope with unanticipated dangers after they have become manifest, learning to bounce back” (p. 77). Resilience has also been defined as a positive adaptation in response to adversity (Waller, 2001), the ability of communities to withstand external shocks to their social infrastructure (Adger, 2000), the capability to bounce back and to effectively use physical and economic resources to aid recovery following exposure to hazards (Paton, 2000), or the ability of community members to take meaningful, deliberate, and collective action to remedy the impact of a problem, including the ability to interpret the environment, intervene, and move on (Pfefferbaum, Reissman, Pfefferbaum, Klomp, & Gurwitch, 2007). Frankenberger et al. (2014) defined resilience as the ability to return to the original state of equilibrium after a disturbance, while Ganor and Ben-Lavy (2003) defined the term as the ability of individuals and communities to deal with a state of continuous, long-term stress; the ability to find unknown inner strengths and resources to cope effectively; the measure of adaptation and flexibility. According to Folke (2006), social resilience is the necessity of human systems to learn to manage by change. The United Nations International Strategy on Disaster Reduction (UNISDR; 2005) defined resilience as “the capacity of a system, community or society potentially exposed to hazards to adapt, by resisting or changing in order to reach and maintain an acceptable level of functioning and structure.” These varying definitions all attempt to link the concept of resilience to recovery after physical stress. In summary, school resilience to earthquake risks can be stated as the ability of a school facility to ensure the structural safety of school buildings, to support the continuity of education delivery services, to reduce the impact of earthquakes on children, and to support community solidarity in emergencies.

The issue of school resilience drew huge attention from UNISDR during the 2006-2007 World Disaster Reduction Campaign, with the theme “Disaster reduction begins at school.” UNISDR (2007a) chose this theme because it is aligned with Priority 3 of the Hyogo Framework for Action 2005-2015, which states, “Use knowledge, innovation and education to build a culture of safety and resilience at all levels” (p. 9) and because schools are the optimal settings for shaping durable collective values, and are therefore suitable for building a culture of prevention and disaster resilience. The campaign outlined four reasons for which a school should be made resilient: to save lives, to be used as a shelter, to support education delivery and to preserve national resources (Asian Disaster Preparedness Center [ADPC], 2007). However, although school resilience to disasters has been emphasized and has received considerable attention, it remains an ambiguous term to educational leaders and school administrators, particularly when there is a lack of strategies and resources required to achieve such resilience. As recently observed, the earthquakes in Nepal and the flooding in Myanmar have destroyed thousands of school buildings and disrupted educational processes leaving hundreds of thousands of children without education. In the United States, 7 months after Hurricane Katrina, only 20 out of 130 schools in the New Orleans Public School system had reopened affecting the educational attainment and achievement of thousands of children (National Commission on Children and Disasters [NCCD], 2010).

Impacts of Earthquakes on Students, Schools, and Education

Earthquakes generally cause widespread damage in the built environment, and result in school collapse, closures, and interruption of educational processes. The post-earthquake disruption of school operations is one of the main challenges facing government officials and national and international relief agencies, because children and the community can greatly benefit from the state of normality that schools provide. Unfortunately, in many disasters, and particularly in earthquakes, school buildings suffer complete or partial collapse, leading to the deaths and injuries of children, and a disruption to education delivery services that lasts for weeks or months. The delay in reopening schools and restoring education has been commonly observed in regions dominated by poor earthquake preparedness practices. For example, following the deadly 2010 earthquake in Haiti, where more than 4,000 schools were destroyed, education services began to operate after 3 months, in an unfavorable learning environment in tents and temporary structures that are vulnerable to storms and harsh weather conditions (Emerson, 2011). Thus, earthquakes can affect schools in a variety of ways that affect children, the community, and the continuity of education delivery.

Children represent a major segment of the population that can suffer the most devastating consequences of disasters (Peek, 2008); their partial or total dependence on adults means that they become emotionally and physically vulnerable to sudden disasters, such as earthquakes. Children are at high risk of injury or death if an earthquake strikes during school hours, and they may develop serious psychological trauma or developmental concerns in the aftermath of a disaster of this type (Felix et al., 2011). An assessment of the psychological effects on schoolchildren following exposure to an earthquake revealed a high rate of mild-to-severe posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptoms (Kolaitis et al., 2003). Disasters disrupt children’s daily lives, leading to school disruption and poor academic progress, and exposure to destructive behaviors (Silverman & Greca, 2002). The loss of immediate family members means that children may feel isolated or displaced in unfamiliar and unfriendly environments. These negative effects may have severe consequences for children’s physical health, emotional growth, and academic performance (Smilde-van den Doel, Smit, & Wolleswinkel-van den Bosh, 2006). Furthermore, earthquakes may alter students’ attitudes toward school and education. Particularly, when children are out of school for long periods, many of them could fall into child labor, child marriage, and sexual exploitation. They are also at greater risk of violence, rape, and recruitment to fighting in divided sectarian societies, as well as prostitution, and other life-threatening, often criminal, activities. Many will simply never return to the classroom. For example, after the 2003 Bam earthquake in Iran, lower student attendance was noticed, particularly among the boys, many of whom were no longer interested in school and education, despite the efforts made to establish temporary tent schools within a week of the disaster (Tierney, Khazai, Tobin, & Krimgold, 2005).

The destruction of school buildings by earthquakes has been documented in numerous global locations, particularly in regions where disaster risk-reduction strategies have been poorly implemented. In recent earthquakes, school buildings have suffered a sudden collapse, with students and teachers trapped under rubble or crushed to death by concrete blocks, leading to a mass-casualty event (Wisner et al., 2004). When an earthquake hit the Spitak area of northern Armenia during school hours in 1988, many children lost their lives due to the collapse of school buildings. A total of 285 children (of 302) died at one of these schools, and almost two thirds of the total number of deaths (25,000) due to this earthquake were children and adolescents. More than 10,000 school buildings collapsed as a result of the 2005 Pakistan earthquake (Hewitt, 2007), leaving surviving children without education, and the 1995 Kobe earthquake in Japan caused extensive and varied damage to approximately 4,500 educational facilities. Fortunately, no fatalities resulted from this damage because the quake struck the area early in the morning (Nakano, 2004). In the 1999 Chi-Chi earthquake, 700 schools were destroyed in Taiwan, and the 2001 Gujarat earthquake in India caused damage to more than 11,600 schools (World Bank, 2000) and affected 3 million children (UNCRD, 2009). As many as 1,150 schools in Indonesia were damaged or destroyed in the 2004 earthquake (UNICEF, 2006), while in the 2003 Bam earthquake, hundreds of teachers and 8,000 to 10,000 students were killed (Tierney et al., 2005). During the Sichuan earthquake of May 2008, approximately 10,000 students were crushed in the more than 7,000 school classrooms that collapsed (UNISDR, 2007b). In addition, approximately 38,000 students died in the Haiti earthquake, which also killed 1,300 teachers and other personnel (Bhuwanee, 2010); the Ministry of Education offices were destroyed, along with 4,000 schools—close to 80% of the educational sector in the Port-au-Prince area. Such repeated tragedies speak for themselves, and should not be accepted, underestimated, or ignored. It becomes clear that the resilience of schools must be prioritized to improve children’s safety and prevent school closures after the occurrence of earthquakes. In summary, earthquakes have severe impacts on the education sector; they destroy school buildings, put children at risk, disrupt educational processes, and deny children access to education.

Promoting the Resilience of Schools to Earthquakes

Seismically deficient school buildings are susceptible to heavy damage, which can result in financial losses, mass casualties, and human suffering. In divided societies, internal conflicts, political tension, and socioeconomic factors can encourage migration or redistribution of the population, individuals, or groups. Such factors can lead to the construction of low-quality, unplanned, and frequently unlicensed buildings, including schools and other essential public service facilities, on the periphery of cities.

Seismic design and code regulations specify the minimum standards to protect school buildings from collapse and to ensure the safety of students and staff during earthquakes. These regulations provide guidance for engineers and builders in designing and constructing structures that can resist earthquakes. Adherence to seismic design requirements is usually irregular across countries, and even within cities and among different communities within countries. Unless a country has adhered to seismic code requirements, school buildings will fail to provide occupants with even a minimum level of protection against earthquakes. Building schools that can withstand earthquake forces can be considered a first step toward making these schools resilient. Although seismic strengthening of existing school buildings is the responsibility of local governments’ building divisions, school administrators can also play an important role, as they can request a seismic vulnerability assessment of their school buildings and the implementation of the recommended structural strengthening. Thus, any attempt to increase the resilience of a community to earthquakes without accounting for the safety of school buildings is inadequate and will fail to achieve the desirable intended resilience.

Effective implementation of earthquake-resistant school buildings is essential for reducing earthquake losses, and contributes to the state of normality that is required after disasters. When schools provide protection for children and staff during an earthquake and support the community by acting as temporary shelters for the homeless victims, they contribute to the resilience of their communities. Safe schools could also reduce the students’ fear of aftershocks and reduce the psychological and traumatic effects on children. However, in many countries, a low awareness of the earthquake risk and consequences on behalf of educational leaders and school administrators has contributed to poor investment in the seismic structural safety of school buildings, and has therefore reduced the seismic resilience of schools and communities.

A school administrator who is interested in improving school resilience and protecting the school building and students against earthquakes can request a seismic vulnerability assessment of the school building; this can be achieved by visual and analytical engineering evaluations of its key structural components. The evaluation process proposes various strengthening techniques, along with the corresponding estimated costs. To avoid financial strain, an incremental strengthening approach that phases a series of discrete actions can be easily implemented over a period of several years. This strategy is effective, affordable, and nondisruptive (FEMA, 2003). In general, the cost of seismic strengthening of a structural concrete school building varies between 15% and 25% of the replacement cost, depending on the type of strengthening technique used (Naja & Baytiyeh, 2014, 2015).

Although improvement of the structural resistance capabilities of school buildings is necessary, it is not sufficient to make a school operational and seismically resilient; after a destructive earthquake, even some seismically designed school buildings may undergo minor damage that requires repair before the school can reopen, or, in some situations, undamaged schools may be needed to shelter homeless victims. In such circumstances, students become victims and are forced out of their school for weeks or months. The readiness of schools to deliver education online during the temporary disruption of school operations or closures can have great advantages and may become a social necessity and a national priority. Education continuity offers students substantial benefits and learning opportunities, including increased access to learning, as well as convenience of time and place in view of the disruption of transportation service facilities after an earthquake. This proposed online teaching and learning mode can be implemented as an interventional approach to provide students with access to education, particularly in circumstances when damage to schools means that a long period of reconstruction is necessary. To address the challenge of education continuity after earthquakes, the transformation of traditional school education in disaster-affected regions into online educational environments that utilize information communications technology (ICT) applications can become a valuable interventional solution that improves school and community resilience in vulnerable communities.

The integration of technology in education is today an important part of social and educational development. When appropriately applied, technology can contribute to positive learning experiences and can improve learning outcomes, particularly during the challenging times of earthquake disasters. It has considerable potential in these circumstances, where teaching and learning processes face the risk of interruption, and becomes the only and the best available approach to consider for the delivery of education. Given that student and teacher absenteeism is frequently a problem in disaster-affected regions, online communication tools can provide learning opportunities that might otherwise be impossible to offer. Moreover, it has repeatedly been shown that technological tools increase student motivation and foster student-centered approaches. This indicates the considerable potential of ICT in-post disaster periods, in which traditional, formal school settings may not be running properly or completely uninterrupted. For example, social media applications can provide a safe environment for children to learn in emergencies, and they increase the capacity of teachers to support children’s continued learning on a virtual basis, out of the school classroom.

Social media learning tools are online applications that allow learners to create, share, discuss and modify content (Greenhow & Gleason, 2012; Kaplan & Haenlein, 2010; Kietzmann, Hermkens, Mccarthy, & Silvestre, 2011), and can incorporate social networking, video-sharing and image-sharing sites, as well as wikis, podcasting, blogging, and micro-blogging tools for teaching and learning activities (Conley & Sabo, 2015). Social media learning tools can also include mobile applications and other educational technologies, such as learning management systems, which can improve interactive experiences (Kukulska-Hulme, 2010). Thus, the incorporation of social media tools in teaching and learning can provide potential advantages for both students and teachers in disaster-affected regions, and the integration of social media enables students to access education and gain psychological comfort in times of disasters, when school closures may last for weeks or months and delivery of education is interrupted. However, the delivery of education via technology requires a long period of preparation and practice to enable teachers and students to effectively utilize this approach.

School administrators who are interested in sustaining education delivery in post-earthquake disasters should have an emergency plan. This can be formulated by maintaining communication, access to data, and learning materials delivery. With the available mobile technologies, ICT staff at schools can create groups for each class for messaging and communication purposes. Cloud computing is an ideal option for the safe storage of school data, whereby teachers, students, and administrators can access the required information at any time. Cloud computing can also be used to store the learning management system adopted at the school. Moreover, free social media tools are available online, and these enable teachers to design their own courses, upload their learning materials, and provide access to these for their students.

Contribution of School Resilience and Education to Recovery of Communities

Recovery from disasters is not just physical; rather, it is also a social process that begins in the pre-disaster phase and is extended in the post-disaster period (Aldrich & Meyer, 2015; Nigg, 1995). The recovery from an earthquake requires lengthy planning and engagement of social services to provide affected communities with the necessary strength to survive during these difficult times. Increasing community resilience via the strengthening of social service facilities can influence the disaster recovery process. Social services are a range of public services that are provided by government, private, and nonprofit organizations, and include benefits and facilities such as education, food subsidies, health care, and employment training among others. In the absence of resilient social services, the impacts of an earthquake disaster would be more severe on community victims, and children may be at greater risk of quitting school and education, as a result of becoming involved in child labor or because of their family’s relocation. As social service facilities, schools can provide an important context for restoring familiar roles and routines following disasters, including a sense of safety and protection. However, to fulfill such a role, schools in vulnerable seismic regions should increase their resilience via the development of their own emergency recovery plan, to ensure rapid recovery and to assist their communities in the recovery process.

To facilitate rapid disaster recovery, the social services infrastructure, including schools, with a high public concentration, must be protected, such that they can remain functioning and can assist victims and survivors post-earthquakes. The operational capability of such facilities will contribute to the endurance of the community, yielding greater resilience of that community. Resilient schools may also become channels of communication, promoting messages on health and hygiene that help to improve the quality of life of victims, and may act as temporary shelters to serve disaster victims, which can reduce the suffering of the homeless and support struggling communities. Schools play a crucial role in the recovery of families, children, and entire communities, and can also be considered central to children’s return to routine and normality (Peek & Fothergill, 2006).

The continued operation and rapid restoration of these services is necessary for overall community recovery. After a disaster, individual recovery is linked to community recovery (Hobfoll et al., 2007), which, in turn, is tied to the speed of the restoration of social services. The vital role that schools play in pre-disaster preparedness and post-disaster recovery of vulnerable communities means that they must be protected against potential hazards and risks (Naja & Baytiyeh, 2014; Shaw & Kobayashi, 2001). Previous research has confirmed that school education is one of the best media to improve earthquake disaster awareness and preparedness of a community, particularly when risk education programs are integrated into the school curricula at all levels (Izadkhah & Hosseini, 2005). Moreover, the school system has a substantial role in improving public skills in responding to disasters, while strengthening community resilience. A recent study of schoolchildren from different parts of Japan suggested that it is not the earthquake experience but the community and family education that is more effective in motivating a person to take risk-reducing action (Shaw & Goda, 2004; Shaw, Kobayashi, & Kobayashi, 2004). In addition, schools can play a key role in promoting social cohesion, which can strengthen community resilience and help in post-disaster recovery. Education, sense of belonging, and community engagement can influence the level of social cohesion as education is developed not only in schools, but at home and through interactions in the local community. Education is one of the means by which interactions can happen between society members from different cultures and backgrounds (Gradstein & Justman, 2001). Furthermore, the seismic safety of school buildings can promote the value of safe buildings in the surrounding community and consequently encourage the community to develop further earthquake disaster mitigation measures. When their resilience is ensured, schools have the potential to function after earthquakes. Therefore, schools play a crucial role in strengthening the resilience of a community to earthquake risks, and they also assist in the post-earthquake recovery period.

In addition to the tragic consequences of earthquakes with regard to the loss of children’s lives, PTSD and depressive symptoms have been documented in children and adults who have experienced disasters, including earthquakes, tsunamis, and hurricanes (Felix et al., 2011; Goenjian et al., 2005; John, Russell, & Russell, 2007; Kolaitis et al., 2003; Piyasil et al., 2007). Investigators have also focused on community social cohesion as a protective factor against mental health problems in the aftermath of a disaster (Hikichi, Aida, Tsuboya, Kondo, & Kawachi, 2016).

Community resilience to disasters is an important concept in disaster mitigation because it focuses on recovery, and not just on vulnerability (Mayunga, 2007). Vinson (2004) found that a cohesive community has a higher level of volunteering. Community social cohesion is defined as the extent of social connectedness and solidarity among groups in a society (Kawachi & Berkman, 2014). In previous disasters, social cohesion has reflected the level of willingness of residents to work together during the rebuilding of their community (Carroll, Cohn, Seesholtz, & Higgins, 2005). Communities that lack social cohesion may face slow recovery. Disconnected communities are not as quick to respond in the immediate aftermath of a disaster and have a limited ability to recover. Building social cohesion in vulnerable communities is an essential strategy for enhancing the resilience of communities before a disaster occurs. The link between a community recovery and the social cohesion can be critical to respond to and recover from disasters (Sampson, 2012). In fact, Sampson (2012) argued that “extant literature suggests that factors such as social network connectedness, social cohesion, trust, and community bonds facilitate social interaction and information exchange. This reservoir of social resources can then be drawn upon in the event of a disaster” (p. 156). Active participation and collaboration, such as volunteering, enable people to foster a sense of collectiveness and belonging (Levy, Itzhaky, Zanbar, & Schwartz, 2012), which in turn helps to build resilience in a community. The links between social cohesion and resilience are particularly important, as they can potentially become the basis for achieving disaster resilience (Townshend, Awosoga, Kulig, & Fan, 2015). Social cohesion is sometimes viewed as a correlate, a predictor of resilience (Rolfe, 2006; Vinson, 2004). Following the 2008 Morpeth floods in the United Kingdom (Wind & Komproe, 2012) and Hurricane Sandy in New York in 2012 (Lowe, Sampson, Gruebner, & Galea, 2015), it was found that social cohesion and collective efficacy in the community were associated with a lower incidence of PTSD.

Thus, strong social cohesion within the various groups of a pluralistic society has been reported to have positive effects on the recovery process after disasters (Patel, Rogers, Amlôt, & Rubin, 2017). For instance, the Chicago heat wave tragedy of 1995 that led to at least 465 heat-related deaths over a roughly 2-week period displayed the vulnerability of low-income communities during extreme heat events, and highlighted the effectiveness of social cohesion in the recovery process of traumatic events. Researchers found that three of the 10 Chicago neighborhoods with the lowest rates of heat-related deaths were low-income, African American communities. The reason was attributed to the high levels of community interaction and organization that decreased isolation among residents. Thus, socially cohesive communities in which people are engaged in social or civic events exhibit increased resilience against disasters (Baussan, 2015). Also, researchers have found that towns and neighborhoods with a strong sense of social connection recovered faster after Hurricane Sandy; a study of residents in affected communities across the New York and New Jersey region following Super-storm Sandy, conducted by the Associated Press-NORC Center for Public Affairs Research indicated that neighborhoods lacking in social cohesion and trust are having a more difficult time recovering from the catastrophe (Associated Press-National Opinion Research Center [AP-NORC, 2013]). The data show that in slowly recovering neighborhoods, residents have less sense of belonging to the community and exhibit weak social cohesion. Thus, the lack of social cohesion can be an indicator of the capacity of communities to effectively respond to and recover from disasters.

Chowdhury (2011) showed that a significant positive relationship exists between the level of community social cohesion and disaster recovery of households. Hikichi et al. (2016) demonstrated that social cohesion in the community contributes to its resilience in the post-trauma recovery process. They showed that social cohesion strengthened the resilience of community residents in the aftermath of the 2011 Japan earthquake, and suggested that this was associated with the prevention of PTSD following a disaster. Social cohesion can promote psychological health by strengthening both individual and community resilience in the aftermath of a disaster (Lowe et al., 2015). Furthermore, Nakagawa and Shaw (2004) as well as Aldrich (2011) found that pre-disaster social networks in the community helped to explain the differential rates of community recovery after the devastating earthquakes of Kobe, Japan, in 1995 and Gujarat, India, in 2001.

In this respect, schools can be a favorable environment in which to help students interact with people from different sects or ethnicities and work together on projects and activities. Therefore, schools can help students to develop new perceptions and reshape their existing views regarding numerous aspects of society (Baytiyeh, 2017; Baytiyeh & Naja, 2014). Moreover, schools can foster tolerance across social groups within communities, facilitate socialization among individuals of different backgrounds, and promote mutual appreciation and respect for diversity (Heyneman, 2003). As a result, school education can strengthen the social cohesion of a community and improve its resilience to disasters.

Although social cohesion and social networks remain underemphasized and underutilized in disaster planning, mitigation, and management (Aldrich, 2010; Wisner, 2003), there is a direct link between community social cohesion and community resilience. Social networks enable community sufferers to turn to each other for information and support during times of crisis (Aldrich, 2012). For example, relatives and neighbors may act as important sources of information, or may provide sympathy for people suffering from loss; victims and survivors might feel more comfortable as a result of being surrounded by supportive friends, neighbors, and relatives (Kawachi & Subramanian, 2006). Communities’ efforts to work together to survive and recover from disasters have been noticed and documented (Fischer, 2008; Quarantelli & Dynes, 1977). For example, following the 1995 Kobe earthquake, the majority of individuals who were rescued from their collapsed homes were saved by their neighbors (Aldrich, 2012; Horwich, 2000; Shaw & Goda, 2004). Survivors of the 2011 Tohoku earthquake in Japan admitted that many of the elderly were saved as a result of the assistance of their neighbors, friends, and family (Aldrich & Meyer, 2015). Thus, as illustrated in Figure 1, the integration of social cohesion through schools’ curricula and activities, the improvement of the seismic resistance capacity of school buildings and the readiness to use technology to support post-disaster education delivery can increase the resilience of schools and contribute to the rapid recovery of communities after an earthquake.

OPEN IN VIEWER

Figure 1.

A schematic illustration of the contribution of school resilience to post-earthquake community recovery.

Conclusion

Disasters can change the future of cities’ and communities’ demographics. Chicago, Tokyo, and San Francisco have survived and flourished after being destroyed by fire and earthquakes. However, the city center of Managua, Nicaragua, never recovered from a 1972 earthquake, and Galveston, Texas, lost its significance as a major U.S. port after being devastated by a great hurricane in 1900. Thus, the recovery from disasters remain a challenge for communities, governments, and international agencies.

The lack of emphasis on the importance of school resilience for disaster recovery in many earthquake-prone countries continues to remain a major problem for the disaster recovery of affected communities. Previous disasters have shown that the impacts of earthquakes on schools and education were overwhelming; they led to serious disruptions of the functioning of educational services and inflicted widespread losses that delayed the recovery of affected communities. This article demonstrates that the integration of social cohesion in curricular activities and the improvement of school resilience to earthquakes can have substantial effects on the post-disaster recovery process of affected communities. It also shows that the implementation of structural seismic strengthening of school buildings and the readiness to use technology in teaching and learning during the temporary school closure periods that result from an earthquake is necessary to strengthen school resilience to earthquake disasters and improve the capabilities of affected communities to recover.