Posted on 04/09/2020 3:19:34 AM PDT by RoosterRedux
My mother is a public school elementary teacher in a low-income neighborhood of Salinas, California, a modest suburban town fueled by the agriculture industry. Of all the schools nationwide, I would have expected her school to be one of the last to transition from the classroom to distance learning during the ongoing coronavirus crisis. Almost 85% of her students come from low-income households, and many are the children of migrant workers.
Yet, to my pleasant surprise, my mother’s school has been online for two weeks now, only days after California’s statewide shelter-in-place order came into effect. Not only that, she tells me that attendance is strong. Students whose families did not have a computer or internet connection were lent one temporarily with a hot spot connection from the school. In normal times, it would be nothing short of a miracle that a bureaucratic public school system could shift its centuries-old model so quickly. But these, of course, are not normal times.
If there’s any light at the end of the tunnel with the coronavirus shutdown, it might just be schools such as my mom’s finally embracing the distance learning tools that have been available for years now. While the internet has the promise fundamentally to disrupt industries such as education and healthcare for the better, policymakers and professionals have dragged their feet for years. The coronavirus could finally push America’s largest and most important institutions to get with the program and unleash the promise of the 21st century.
This could clearly manifest in the healthcare industry, as state medical boards have strictly regulated telemedicine for years.
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonexaminer.com ...
He said that she was shocked at how effective it is...and how much easier than being in a classroom.
I asked him to explain "easier" and he didn't have a detailed answer. Just easier.
Because of the virus it is literally pushing people, businesses, etc to change. Many thought working from home was not a good thing but are discovering many positives things.
We'll soon see.
She doesn’t have to play disciplinarian.
That was among my first thoughts.
Without classroom discipline many will be distracted from doing anything at all in the way of education.
On the other hand the opposite might be true. A teacher making perpetual political remarks that tend to brain wash a kid towards the left might be somewhat suppressed. And if a teacher does make some inappropriate remark, be it political, sexual or otherwise, there will be a record of it.
That was my impression. She’s teaching but the kids are not in her hair.
It would be easier because you don’t have to cope with the interpersonal management of the students. Homeschooling up to grad 5 or 6 is a couple of hour a day operation with added read aloud times and story tapes.
Either they want to learn or they don't. If they want to learn, they will seek it. It they don't, they will obstruct/impair/damage the process so that others find learning more difficult.
Distance learning (and homeschooling to a lesser degree) shift the responsibility to the student, where it belongs.
I absolutely agree
I think any schooling should last until about age 12 to 14. Then the true scholars may want to continue, but others will want to be trained in apprenticeships while learning financial skills, citizenship skills, and honing their interests.
Most kids want to start life at 14 to 16, and could if permitted.
Many years ago, as a 16 year old high school drop out I went to a local high school to see if I could enroll in the night school program. I was told I couldn’t do that until I was 21. When I asked why, the principal got up, closed the door and explained,
if we let high school kids go to night school, this place would be empty, kids would be out working, marrying, and doing their lives, and the regular schools would close.
The entire system is a lie.
That’s what is going to happen soon and the economy will be taking off.
Yes only private schools should exist after age 12 to 14.
Private trade schools,
private skills schools,
private scholarly schools,
Classes and certifications in areas, like the old IBM schools, bank school, insurance schools need to flourish funded by the industries.
This will keep leftist bu**sh*t to a minimum.
apprenticeships in all the trades, with less licenses needed.
Trade groups will flourish and be self policing.
the end of unions as they are currently structured.
Government workers will have the no unions, training in their areas (like SS, tax, military) and no special privileges.
In 1981, I had my first accounting class at Penn State. It was taught via video. It was a basic business course so every business major had to take it. Very effective. My folks were pissed they were paying for a professor who was not even in the classroom. There were many classrooms with two monitors and a grad student. You could ask the grad student a question or buzz into the professor. The prof had a foot pedal which would change the camera angle......either a frontal view of his face and torso or a top view of his desktop.
Having seen how wonderful this experience was, I have been flabbergasted at why we never moved to this model, especially with the technology we have today.
I changed companies last year and am amazed how few people at this new place know how to use WebEx.
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