Have an honest talk with your school age children.
Are they really learning right now in their virtual classroom? I’d wager the answer for the overwhelming majority is No.
Is that the fault of the student? No, they were never taught how to learn remotely. It takes completely different skills than learning in person. There are variables that just don’t exist in a school — internet connectivity, internet attention magnets, no eye contact, limited one-on-one help, volume controls, screen reading, brothers, sisters, just a world of differences that we can’t pretend don’t require new techniques to learn around.
Since March I haven’t seen a local, state or national plan to teach these skills.
Are the teachers to blame? No, they were hired to teach in a classroom. They went to school and practiced in a classroom; they were taught a pedagogy based on in-person teaching. This is akin to asking veterinarians to play doctor. They can, and often do play this role in an emergency, but they don’t become doctors forevermore after the event.
Since March I haven’t seen a local, state or national plan to teach these skills.
Our state and local school boards are telling us that this global emergency requires we enlist all the classroom teachers to automatically become online virtual education teachers. They are telling us that because it is unsafe for kids to be in classrooms in person that the only alternative is to “go online.”
Virtual education is useless for allowing parents to go to work.
Virtual education will fail our students if they and the teachers aren’t trained in its use.
Physical classroom education is stupid and deadly right now.
Maybe we need to think bigger, shut down all schools completely, and use that time to teach our students, teachers, faculty and family what it takes to succeed in a remotely connected world.
We need to stop pretending COVID will just go away, and we need to wake up to the new reality.
This half-assed approach to education isn’t helping teachers, students or parents.
Chris Joseph is a resident of Greenfield.