The pandemic is only increasing the yawning educational gap between the haves and the have nots. This all anecdotal from friends and acquaintances. In some poor urban districts(Philadelphia for example), very few of the students were going to be able to remote learn. The families lacked computers, internet access, etc. The decision was to offer no remote learning because it would be unfair to leave the majority of students even further behind. The district our two children still of school age attend is in relatively wealthy community (by fly over country standards, not be coastal standards) and is resource rich. The vast majority of students had access to computers, remember you need one for each child at home, and internet services. The school gave laptops to the few students that lacked them and the local internet provider gave free access for the remainder of the school year in those cases. The majority of students also had at least one parent that could be home. The online instruction wasn't great given the need to create it in a matter of days, but the students at least didn't fall back. In the middle was a neighboring school system of a much more middle class and lower class community. They set up on-line learning, but somewhere between a quarter to a third of the students never logged on even once after in person classes ended. A friend that is a music teacher planned an online sing-a-long to end the year. Of a student body of 300, 6 attended. If learning is all remote come the fall, we await the decision of NY governor Cuomo later this summer, it's hard to believe that there won't be similar results. Resource rich families and schools will have the hardware and time to devote to their children continuing to learn, even if at a slower pace. Some middle class families will keep up, many will fall behind because they lack computers, internet and a parent able to devote significant school time hours to keeping their children engaged. The poor will be basically abandoned. Who is going to give them computers, internet, (housing and food, a substantial portion of our upstate inner city students are both significantly food and housing insecure.) Who helps the student when the parents are working, of often the single parent is working?I honestly don't know how you "remote teach" students in elementary school, period. Have a Zoom classroom meeting where everyone is logged on and the teacher has 30+ windows open on her screen? And the student, too, I presume? And expect the kids to pay attention? I have high-speed internet, so I probably have the bandwidth. I don't have a camera or a microphone, though I could afford to provide one. What of families with none of these things? I know of families who move regularly from apartment to apartment as they are unable to pay the rent. The schools do all they can to teach such children, but it's a strain in the best of circumstances. Now?
Our national response has been to worry about when bars and golf courses will reopen. It's a total failure of government and society bereft of values.
And I teach on-line; I've been doing it almost 20 years, and I'm doing it this summer. But it requires massive amounts of reading and extraordinary self-motivation by the students. It's a format well-adapted to college (though not suited for all college students. My daughter tried it once, and never again.). But even for high school? Much less elementary school classes?
So far the "national plan" is to reopen businesses and reopen schools (Trump wanted them to reopen in mid-May, when most were coming to the end of the school year). And the Secretary of the Treasury is telling schools to re-open because, you know, sure.
Once again the people who actually understand these problems and are working to surmount them, the teachers and school administrators, are voiceless in this debate, and no one is asking them what they can do.
And honestly, how do you "socially distance" children in a classroom?
— Ian Bogost (@ibogost) July 2, 2020
Or anyone, for that matter. For a society once so obsessed with "family values," we really don't seem to have any at all.
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