EDUCATING WITH COVID

Education is not the filling of a pail, but the lighting of a fire. ~ William Butler Yeats

The fabric of education has been ripped apart by the coronavirus. In a different era (before March), the contact-full classroom relationships between students and teachers and the myriad of their daily interconnections served to build knowledge and personal self-awareness, the heart of education. No longer. It is purposefully missing in the now-necessitated norm of online distance-learning (DL) education for this fall’s expected 70.40 million primary, secondary and college students. That’s over 20% of our population.

Education specialists believe that DL in most school districts is not working and that some students are falling behind. A middle-school teacher states, “We know this isn’t a good way to teach.” Black, Hispanic and low-income students are struggling the most, research suggests, according to a NYTimes story.

Dana Goldstein reports the richest and poorest parents are spending about the same number of hours on remote school, but wealthier parents are inevitably able to provide more books and supplies at home, more quiet space, educational toys and often more knowledge of the curriculum. High-income school districts are usually providing strong remote instruction, rather than basic worksheet-like activities. Inequalities often are magnified.

What DL diminishes is the constructive, essential interactive nature of multi-student, classroom-based education – students’ vocally intermingling face-to-face with their teacher and their peers on a continuing basis. It’s something that we’ve taken completely for granted, until recently. Online meeting software like Zoom, TeamViewer or Google Meet allow some simultaneous serial communication, but screens afford a wholly different experience than actual physically-direct collaboration for a classful of students.

So the critics are correct, DL is a threadbare approximation of the education we all remember. It sucks, no matter what grade-level is being discussed. But what do DL critics recommend instead? Mum's the word.

I’ve seen discussions about “split-session” teaching (e.g., having only a portion of the students physically come to classes at any given time), but I can’t imagine how teachers could deal with this possibility – that, in effect, would multiply their required class-time, depending on what the allowed portion is. Also, if “double-time” teaching could be more viable in any context (letting in one-half the class’s students at a time), it would challenge everyone.

Double-timing in-school teaching for the earliest grades, where the students’ education happens in a single classroom and is as much social-learning as academic, would call for schools to “create” twice as many school hours each week in order to comply with state-mandated requirements. California, like 27 other states, requires a minimum of 180 days of formal school instruction each year.

Raise your hand if you’re in favor of a 12-day week (10 school days’ worth of double-time teaching and 2 “recovery, week-end” days; although I think at least 3 recovery days for teachers would be far better after working for 5, double-time days). Or how about daily day and night classes for PK-12 grades? Or mandated home-schooling? What a surprise, I don’t see any raised hands. No wonder local school districts are stymied.

College students face a similar dilemma, but they’re (or someone else) is directly paying for the privilege of being there, unlike public PK-12 schools. At least 100 lawsuits demanding that colleges-universities provide refunds for tuition, fees and/or room and board have been filed so far. The students are claiming that the online DL college experience they received this spring (with the unaccepted, uninvited coronavirus on campus and no “regular” classes) is an academic encounter that is not what they bargained or paid for. The courts have yet to decide whether these students have a legitimate claim for refunds. It’s apparently not a slam dunk for the students. Even if they’re successful, will the colleges-universities be able to provide the reimbursements? According to a person who works for an association representing state higher education programs, colleges’ ability to pay refunds would be “incredibly challenging” due to public education’s sizeable budget cuts and increased costs.

Many colleges-universities are now planning online DL-based education for the fall, including the California State University system, the nation’s largest. Universities are rewriting the rules for on-campus student life in order to avoid a Tragedy of the Campus Commons. Colleges will be demanding their students diligently wear masks, as well as drastically restricting sporting events and somehow curbing social gatherings as well. Will college administrators be able to trust their 18- to 21-year-old undergraduates to follow such decrees? These rules will require behavioral changes that will tax the very being of young immortals. Time will tell.

College is a significant life-event for ever-more people. Thirty-six percent (36%) of US adults now hold at least a B.A. degree, the highest share ever, shown in the chart below. Over 19.64 million people were enrolled in colleges, universities and other “degree-granting institutions” in 2018, 57% of whom were female. This fall, 19.74 million are expected to register. Yet it’s worth remembering that despite the well-deserved praise for our decades-long increase, college degree-holders still represent only a smidgen more than one-third of US adults. At times we may act like a deserving majority, but we’re far from it. 

 Percent of US adults with a BA or higher degree, 1950-2019

 Source: NCES.ed.gov

Thus, even though it sucks, DL is the only practical, nontoxic means of providing public education now. It’s a version of formal education that can nearly adapt to the present, fraught circumstances amidst the scythe of the coronavirus, existing school-university infrastructure and available teachers and staff.

That is, unless I’ve missed a magical, superior education method that remains unmentioned because Albus Dumbledore never disclosed the Hogwarts’ secret handshake. In our current, pre-vaccine, coronavirus-filled world, it’s overwhelmingly online distance-learning, like it or not. And most of us don’t. Economists have a term for such schemes; they’re called “second-best.” At best, DL is a second-best solution, but better than any others.

Almost lost in the dark mists of this pandemic and our cavernous recession are progressives who continue roaring for free college and student debt-forgiveness. Yup, Bernie and Elizabeth have lost the race to be the Democratic Party’s presidential nominee, but some of their backers still actively pursue the provision of much vaster subsidies for college-goers. In the midst of giant, covid-related federal, state and local revenue reductions, adding these policies’ substantial costs ($2.2 trillion) makes little sense for reasons I’ve previously mentioned. Enacting such expensive, flawed plans for free college fade in importance compared to far broader, more pressing human priorities like public safety, adequate food and sufficient housing. Stow it free-college folks; instead seek the secret handshake.