Viral Education
“We’re building the plane as we’re flying it.”
— New York City Schools Chancellor Richard Carranza
The plane we’re building in mid-air is online education. According to Education Week’s running tally, 124,000 U.S. public and private schools have closed, affecting 55.1 million students as of March 31st.
Practically overnight, schools at all levels, pre-K through higher ed, are scrambling to convert from classroom to online teaching. It’s like a train wreck with railroad cars flying off in 124,000 different directions, abandoning low-income students without internet or home computers.
Since 2008, schools have been flirting with online teaching. By 2012, MOOCs (Massive Online Open Courses) were all the rage, poised to replace colleges. Every university, from Harvard to Stanford to East Tennessee State, believed that the future of education was online. However, by 2018 only 16% of American college students (about 3.3 million) enrolled exclusively in online education.
In K-12 schools, Big Tech has been pushing a version of online education that they call “personalized” or “digital learning.”
“Personalized” means computerized learning. The computer customizes content based on individual progress, leaving the student in front of a computer for six hours each day. In 2018 there were 380 schools or school districts using personalized learning software. It was free — paid for by Mark Zuckerberg’s foundation. He believes that “the magic of technology” holds the solution to education’s problems.
Zuckerberg says that it makes “intuitive sense.” Bill Gates calls personalized learning “cutting edge.” These two billionaires are dictating pedagogy by paying millions to support personalized learning, effectively bribing schools.
The current research on the efficacy of personalized learning is “abysmal” according to Rand researchers. High school students in Brooklyn protested personalized learning in an open letter to Zuckerberg:
“. . . we students find that we are learning very little to nothing. It’s severely damaged our education, and that’s why we walked out in protest. . .”
The coronavirus school closing is the emergency that may rescue online/digital education. Schools are boarding onto online platforms like the terrified soldiers who crowded into the boats at Dunkirk.
The marketers of online education see an opportunity to seize a permanent role. Sal Khan, founder of the online Khan Academy, wrote in the Wall Street Journal:
“[The school closings] may bring about profound changes in how we school our children. In the coming year, students and teachers may need to break down barriers between in-person and at-home schooling, and be ready to shift from one to the other with little notice…. But it may be the catalyst for making personalized learning more common…”
Proponents of personalized learning fail to recognize that students in the classroom learn far more than content. Students learn how to make friends, resolve conflicts, and collaborate. They learn how to contribute to a community.
We are building the plane on the fly. But online education is, at best, a parachute until teachers and students can return to the classroom. Teaching in person is simply better. Professor Mark Edmundson compared good teaching to jazz: the melody of a syllabus, student/teacher improvisation against the domain’s discipline.
Niche, a school ranking service, surveyed high school students homebound by Covid 19, asking: is online education the future for schools? Students rejected the idea: 77% said no, 41% who said no were adamantly opposed, and only 8% said yes.
Derek Newton of Forbes wrote that students, having tried online education, will say “we tried it, we hated it.”
Education is a profoundly human endeavor unsuited for systematic machines. We must learn and practice in person the best traits of our species — collaboration, empathy, and intelligence.
Dan Hunter is an award-winning playwright, songwriter, teacher and founding partner of Hunter Higgs, LLC, an advocacy and communications firm. H-IQ, the Hunter Imagination Questionnaire, invented by Dan Hunter and developed by Hunter Higgs, LLC, received global recognition for innovation by Reimagine Education, the world’s largest awards program for innovative pedagogies. Out of a field of 1200 applicants from all over the world, H-IQ was one of 12 finalists in December 2022. H-IQ is being used in pilot programs in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Oklahoma, North Carolina and New York. He is co-author, with Dr. Rex Jung and Ranee Flores, of A New Measure of Imagination Ability: Anatomical Brain Imaging Correlates, published March 22, 2016 in The Frontiers of Psychology, an international peer-reviewed journal. He’s served as managing director of the Boston Playwrights Theatre at Boston University, published numerous plays with Baker’s Plays, and has performed his one-man show ABC, NPR, BBC and CNN. Formerly executive director of the Massachusetts Advocates for the Arts, Sciences, and Humanities (MAASH) a statewide advocacy and education group, Hunter has 25 years’ experience in politics and arts advocacy. He served as Director of the Iowa Department of Cultural Affairs (a cabinet appointment requiring Senate confirmation). His most recent book, Atrophy, Apathy & Ambition,offers a layman’s investigation into artificial intelligence.