With the dark cloud cast by the Coronavirus looming over the country much like the Trump presidency, for many, it seems this nightmare will never end. Granted its only been about two months since the country, to varying degrees, restricted movement through quarantining, but for many, it seems we’ve been in this holding pattern for lightyears. While some states have already begun relaxing restrictions on movement and reopening commercial stores and eateries, (which will assuredly result in more deaths due to COVID19), increased calls to return to pre-Coronavirus normalcy have blared out like sirens especially among America’s more conservative. Certainly, there are folks convinced we will never return to the norms of our society that existed before the pandemic as they see social distancing, the omnipresence of hand sanitizer, and mask-wearing as here to stay.
Like other entities and institutions that have suspended normal operations in efforts to avoid further viral spread and deaths, schools at all levels have shut down abruptly throwing a monkey-wrench in the routines of millions of parents, students, and educators alike. This interruption was no small thing. The ripple effects of students suddenly being restricted from school sites impacted many parents’ ability to work to provide a living for their household, the lack of students in schools impacted school staff who work on an hourly or per diem basis (substitutes, bus drivers, therapists), as well kept students from their familiar educational setting – the classroom. Many districts, specifically urban districts like the Camden City School District, earnestly tried to maintain some semblance of education and routine in providing students with remote-learning where students log-on to a Zoom Meeting or Google Classroom (or something of that effect), and are taught virtually by their teachers. Suffice to say, the results were less-than-stellar but most certainly beat nothing.
In my current position as union president, I fielded frequent calls and emails from staff members expressing concern for students who were not “logging on”, not able to adequately comprehend lessons through a screen, not turning in assignments, and simply were “lost”. There were concerns expressed about the increased potential for child abuse in that children who may have abusive parents would be confined to the home for longer periods of time. There were concerns about students feeling extremely stressed-out trying to learn in such a solitary fashion leaving them feeling lonely and confused especially when trying to tackle new lessons. There were concerns that students with special needs not having accommodations for their disabilities met while at home while being responsible for learning new course content by themselves. And finally, there were correspondence relating to staff and students simply missing one another; with staff missing their students, and students missing their friends and teachers. Indeed, for all of the many and lingering imperfections of our public-school systems, there is still much to value and treasure, not least of which is fundamentally the ability to be present and fellowship with one another.
In light of our quarantine, schools being shuttered, and state and local agencies mapping out the safest way to return to school buildings in the fall, predictably, narratives around “reimagining” schools abound in edu-commentary. Calls for “reimagining education” through greater reliance on technology with less time in school buildings coupled with more remote learning have become the norm here of late. In essence, the concentrated narrative around “reimagining education” is employing a Rahm Emmanuel-esque approach of using tragedy to force a greater influence of private interests into a public sector service, public education. More reliance on tech hardware and software, more public spending on professional development to prepare teachers for more work with tech, more public spending on tech-based curriculum, and “greater efficiency” with teachers able to service far more students in their virtual “classes” without the drain on district budgets’ in operating and maintaining brick-and-mortar buildings.
Today’s opportunism so unabashedly exhibited by the ultra-rich edu-tech community, and the neoliberal politicians who share their views like New York’s governor Andrew Cuomo rings familiar to other instances of disaster capitalism embodied in the school takeovers in post-Katrina New Orleans and post-Maria Puerto Rico. Rather than pitching in needed resources like laptops, and funding, undertaxed “Re-imaginers” are acting as vultures circling, what appears to be, desperate carcasses in the form of our public schools especially in the hoods of America. Cash strapped with old buildings and few political allies willing to fight, one can understand why those “reimagining education” are licking their chops at the opportunity to access even more hundreds-of-millions-of-education-dollars they stand to gain should their reimaging come to fruition. (Predictably, this piece will be dismissed by some edu-opportunists as an effort to maintain a grasp on the status quo of, God forbid, teachers teaching students in person, which I guess in effect it is.)
The idea that some well-to-do adults with deep pockets and enormous political influence in effort to increase their wealth and influence by advocating for our youngest humans to spend more time home, alone, and away from their schools is sickening. That their argument will gain traction among the well-to-do with deep pockets and political influence who, likely don’t need the stability of having a child educated in a school for hours at a time enabling them to work and earn a living is selfish and self-centered. The concept that education can and should be reduced to exposing content to young learners through a screen, and that somehow constitutes teaching, could only come from uber-affluent non-educators who would never subject their children to their suggested brand of education. The “reimaging education” community are, frankly, detached from the reality that remote-learning is not an opportunity for something better or something contemporary public education should aspire to be, but has been a months-long nightmare for so many, and for so many reasons. (For folks choosing to discount the qualitative narratives from the field decrying the horrors of remote-education, I’d challenge them to glean some takeaways from the spate of college students suing their universities for transitioning their in-person classes to an all-online status.)
Rather than reimaging education to be a space constituted of more screen-time and more technology, we should be reimagining what our schools could look like without the burden of teaching to a corporate-purchased standardized assessment that advantage some students at the expense of others. We should reimagine our schools to operate as safe spaces of cooperation at all levels, as opposed to places of competition. And, we should reimagine our schools to be all they can be by optimizing and prioritizing expressions of love and appreciation of one another, and of the learning process. To be sure, there is reimagining to be done as we return from the COVID19 quarantine and our schools begin open in the Fall. It’s just the kind of reimagining needed is free and substantive; not the fantasies of the edu-tech sector to make them richer but in the end, would be a nightmare in the lives of our students and so many more.
