I was talking to one of the smartest people I know last week and she described the education system as being built of popsicle sticks and tape. This past year has thrown that into a stark light. The amount of hours we instruct don’t matter. Having a qualified teacher teaching doesn’t matter. The quality of instruction is irrelevant and even ensuring that students have the circumstances needed to learn doesn’t matter.
We’re now fully remote again for the third time with no time to prepare and, a year into the pandemic I’m still seeing students who, due to circumstances at home, don’t have the time, space or tech to do remote learning, but that isn’t what the illusionists who keep up the fiction of a credible education system want to talk about. The fix is to pile on on inequitable and wildly unfair expectations just to keep up the fiction of a credible school system. It’ll pay off for the privileged students, so I guess it’s really just business as usual.
Whenever we have a moment we seem to be talking about equity in PD sessions in school this year but it always just seems to be talk. Every day we practice wildly inequitable actions in education without a second thought. IEPed students who are supposed to be given extra time aren’t because of the quadmestered schedule and students without a functional learning environment at home are simply out of luck – but the grades keep rolling over them; grading for privilege isn’t new but it’s amplified in COVID.
During face to face instruction in this pandemic these inequities are exacerbated by a schedule that’s half remote and relentlessly unsustainable as it attempts to cover 4.2 days of regular class every day, only half of it face to face and even that half isn’t really face to face.
When we go fully remote we push even further in the direction of inequity, all just to keep the fiction of an academically credible public education system alive. There is so much more to public education than this cruel metric based on students attempting to chase education illusions from home.
That a it took a pandemic to highlight this house of cards is telling. Even when it’s over you can’t expect equity, just slightly less inequity. Meanwhile the toxic positivists are loudly declaring that some students thrive in this brave new world. If they are then they’re rich and secure and able to operate without IEP needs. I’m not sure that those students need to be put on a pedestal, society will do that for them for their entire lives.
We’re into the final quad-mester of the worst year of teaching I’ve ever experienced. I’m no longer interested in academic rigour. I’m interested in making sure all my students are able to make it to the end of this cruel and inequitable social experiment without feeling like they are being run into the ground by circumstances beyond their control.
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