Zoom is the Devil's Work

Resist Remote Learning!

“It’s like deja vu all over again.” - Yogi Berra

I have no idea what the 20th century sage was referring to, but the quote is apt when considering the locomotive bearing down on education as the light at the end of the Covid-19 tunnel grows brighter.

Early in the 20th century American education largely abandoned progressive practices, based on established learning principles, for an industrial model based on economy of scale and vocational utility.   And here we go again with factory model 2.0.

A confluence of circumstances is opening the door to an eager bunch of educational entrepreneurs who see the wreckage wrought by the pandemic as an opportunity for immense profit.  A recent article in Education Week titled, No Going Back From Remote and Hybrid Learning, Districts Say, offers a troubling introduction.

The pandemic will leave behind severe budget problems for local school districts nationwide.  High unemployment and shrinking tax revenues guarantee that already-strapped schools will be required to tighten their belts even more, slashing personnel in districts already short on qualified faculty.   The current nationwide teacher shortage is estimated at 100,000.  It was already bad enough.  Pre-pandemic, teachers and unions were vilified by education “reformers” who justified their own greed by blaming teachers for an imaginary decline in school performance.  It requires a thick skin and thin wallet to stay in a profession made exponentially harder in 2020.  

But not to worry!  Michael Chasen to the rescue!

Chasen founded Blackboard, a “learning management” system that he sold for $1.7 billion in 2012.   Now he’s back at it with a start-up called ClassEDU, declaring that remote teaching has “passed the acceptance barrier.”  I don’t know how low his acceptance barrier might be, but my two grandchildren find remote teaching slightly less interesting than - well - everything else.

Plato surmised that necessity is the mother of invention.  As schools scrambled to reinvent themselves with the necessity of remote learning, Zoom became a household word.   Parents conducted meetings on Zoom and children “attended” classes on Zoom.   According to the EdWeek article, ClassEDU, through its division called Class for Zoom, “ . . . aims to make Zoom more suitable for education by adding functions such as assignments, interactive quizzes, and an attention-tracking feature that allows teachers to monitor what students are viewing on their screens.”   (Note to students:  Google “Jeffrey Toobin.”)

I suppose that Chasen and the many other entrepreneurs poised to feed at the trough can improve on the dismal state of virtual education, but that’s a bit like putting a new dress on your blow-up doll girlfriend.   Virtual learning is an oxymoron and, like so many other injustices, the deleterious effects will disproportionately impact poor communities, particularly of color.

It is necessary but not sufficient to question the efficacy of virtual learning.  It is also damaging.  

The hazards of technology for children were clear enough in 1990 when Jane Healy wrote Endangered Minds and the evidence has mounted ever since. I needn’t thoroughly explicate the risks here, but there are serious concerns about the effects of digital exposure on young brains such as truncating attention span, decline in analytic ability, less developed verbal expression, stunted ability to solve complex problems, and others. Healy argues that in the course of brain development, certain groups of neurons are especially ripe for stimulation from various types of active learning. Missing these windows of opportunity by sitting in front of screens may create permanent deficits. But her book and other abundant evidence from psychology and neurobiology are feeble Davids in a fight against the Goliath tech industry and its education handmaidens.

Digital engagement can also be addictive, as we all know too well. The constant bombardment of fast-moving images and information can habituate the brain in ways that inhibit other learning. In 2010, a great series of articles in The New York Times by Matt Richtel and other reporters, titled “Your Brain on Computers,” warned of many other ways technology may be more harmful than helpful. One of these pieces made a compelling case that constant digital engagement denies the brain the downtime necessary for consolidating information and creating memories.

A January 2015 piece in The New York Times  by developmental psychologist Susan Pinker cited research done by Duke University. This longitudinal study tracked the academic performance of “disadvantaged middle-school students against the dates they were given networked computers.” The results were as I would expect: “Students who gain access to a home computer between the 5th and 8th grades tend to witness a persistent decline in reading and math scores.” This decline was persistent over five years and the decline was markedly steeper among poor, black students. The study demonstrates that enthusiasm for technology doesn’t bring results even within the closed loop of teaching rote skills in order to improve test scores. In other words, the use of technology carries all the risks I have explicated and doesn’t even balance that risk by improving the meaningless scores that are the currency of success in conventional education. It’s a lose-lose proposition. 

Many psychologists have begun to identify the devastating effects of isolation due to the pandemic.  Adults will likely recover, but children may not.  Social development is, in this progressive educator’s view, the primary value of school.  School is where we begin to find our place in the world, learn to navigate relationships and, in a good (progressive) school, learn and practice the skills necessary for participation in our democratic republic.  

And I would be painfully remiss if not mourning the probable loss of the arts.  Arts programs are already on life support because of budget cuts and administrative indifference.  Music, dance, theater, painting and other art forms are where we both develop and express our humanity.  

We have no humanity without the humanities.  Remote education is, literally and figuratively, artless.

Remote learning is not remotely effective.  Parents, teachers and kids should fight back against the juggernaut of ed tech entrepreneurs.   Education depends on human connection, not broadband connection.  

Resist!