My son’s experience with remote learning is in many ways exceptional — but it may also provide clues to how school systems around the world can harness the potential of technology to improve outcomes for all students. The quality of education students have received during this crisis has been uneven. The digital divide, and the related homework gap, are painfully real. Wealthier parents can afford to stay home; they are more educated and better able to support their children; they have enough laptops, steady Wi-Fi and live in homes where there’s a modicum of personal space. In Hong Kong, nearly 97% of less-well-off children in a March survey by the The Society for Community Organization reported problems with distance learning, much of it related to poor internet connections. Even those who overcome that obstacle cannot always unlock online opportunities without extra help.
That doesn’t mean that the greatest learning experiment in history is doomed to fail. There’s a very real possibility we will see more disruptions, whether driven by extreme weather or pandemics, and we can’t afford to have hundreds of millions of children falling behind. With the right infrastructure, it’s possible to rethink academic structures that have in many ways been unchanged since the Victorian period, and come out with options that are more inclusive and flexible. It won’t be cheap, but in the age of multi-trillion fiscal stimulus, it may be the best investment we make.
Almost everyone I’ve spoken to, from head teachers to students and parents, has expressed frustration over the abrupt switch to virtual schooling during the current health crisis. Most institutions were ill-prepared to move to online instruction. In part, this comes from our overoptimistic views of how easy it is to teach and learn online. That’s not new: Radio, then television, and later mass open online courses, were also supposed to provide high-quality free education for all, yet haven’t quite lived up to expectations.
Distance learning comes with inherent limitations. In China, online tuition is a 500 billion yuan, or nearly $71 billion industry, but even at that size, virtual lessons don’t make the bricks-and-mortar alternative irrelevant. Schools help children turn into self-sufficient beings that can thrive in society. They teach and model good study habits. They also allow parents to work, and in many places, they mean shelter and nutritious food that is otherwise unavailable. Physical schools played these critical roles before the pandemic, and these functions will be even more essential after it passes.
And yet the traditional schoolroom is far from perfect, as students with learning challenges know. It’s also unclear if the current model is the one best suited to produce the workers of the future. Sugata Mitra, a computer programmer-turned-educational researcher famous for his Hole in the Wall experiments in India, argues that the current set-up is the product of an imperial era, geared toward training human computers with neat, legible handwriting and quick arithmetic. Our modern economy, on the other hand, requires innovative, collaborative, problem-solving workers.
Bloomberg
