Pandemic and American Education
March 7, 2020 and the word comes
down from the school administration that the school is closing for the
indefinite future because of the encroaching national and global pandemic. It is 2:00 pm and school ends in 40 minutes and
we will not be coming back for the rest of the school year. The disorientation
is immense, and students express a mixed feel of exhilaration, fear, anxiety
and unsettledness.
Why not feel a bit disoriented? It is a living situation not faced by nearly
every living person on the planet. It is
our 21st century epidemic, bringing to all of us, social, political
and economic upheaval and death.
Every aspect of what you do from
here on out will be from a distance. You
will physically distance yourself from humanity and Teachers will distance themselves
from their students. It is called
distance-learning and everything you as an educator have fashioned together in
your bag of curriculum and experience and projects will have to be digitized
and placed “online”.
The conveying of experiences, knowledge,
understanding and problem-solving to students will now be done at a digital
distance with technology, programs, multimedia tools, internet websites and
interactive programs. As a teacher you
have passed completely through the looking-glass of education and find yourself
in an alternative universe. Ways of
measuring learning will forever be masked behind a computer screen and true
understanding defaults to a measure how self-driven student are now more than ever
before.
Not that students were not
self-driven in the physical classroom with direct human to human contact, they
were motivated but with a healthy dose of humanity. Now students gather digitally for learning
sake and for understanding. Student
motivation to access resources on the Internet and within computerized programs
has never been more important. In fact,
in this alternative universe of school, motivated self-directed student
learning has taken command like a coup takes over a government. It is complete. Now, those most motivated and supported with
the greatest access to technology will be the most successful.
If American schools, over the
century, have held our society together in a form delivering prescribed commonality
of things learned, with a good dose of systematic segregation, then this
digital divide will clearly separate us to a far greater extent than can be
comprehended. Access to technology will
dictate who are the winners and who are the losers. Access, support, specialized teaching and enriching
opportunities will go to the most well connect and in America that usually
means those at the top of the financial economy.
