“I believe the children are our future. Teach them well and let them lead the way. Show them all the beauty they possess inside.” Michael Masser and Linda Creed wrote it. Whitney Houston sang it.
Sure, wonderful sentiment and all that, but what if the future is, um, just not coming because of this damn virus? What if we never get to “teach them well,” due to death, whether that death is human or “just” the death of “brick and mortar” classrooms, and all the other casualties of this virus war?
It isn’t that we can’t still teach, even virtually, because there will, of course, always be online education. Online education will become the norm now, because we’ve seen that it can be done on large scale. It’s not as good as normal, brick and mortar education, and I know this because I used to be a teacher. Sure, there are advantages to teaching (and learning) online, but there are ridiculous disadvantages, too. For one thing, the kind of learning that takes place in a classroom is more than just content education. There are personal benefits, human benefits. When people can ask questions directly, in that moment, not only does their learning improve, so does everyone else’s in the class. The student who asked learns. The people who didn’t know learn, because now they know, too. Even the students who already knew learn, even if only to re-discover what they already knew, which is how much smarter they are than everyone else. If nothing else, it can grow a sense of superiority and smugness that they are, definitely smarter than others. That’s a nice feeling.
In all honesty (what a weird expression, that. Isn’t honest just honest? Not “all honesty?” Is there such a thing as partial honesty? Probably not. “In all honesty, Karen, the meatloaf wasn’t my favorite. Also, I’m screwing your husband.” Sure, that’s real, true, full “all honesty” for ya, and it might end with a plate flying through the air, a trip to the ER and stitches. All honesty. Partial honesty is probably more concise. “Honestly, Karen, the meatloaf wasn’t my favorite.”
Let’s excuse ourselves from the dinner party and come back to online education vs. education of the old fashioned, brick and mortar type. One room schoolhouse. Chalk and talk. The one room schoolhouse type of education actually did work in many ways. Older (or brighter) students taught younger students, the younger students learned more by teaching the students younger than themselves, and so on. (It helps to learn something by teaching it to others.). Finally, and my favorite as a former teacher, the teacher didn’t have to grade as many papers with students claiming they would “defiantly” have a great job when they grew up, when the student probably meant “definitely.” I don’t know, maybe they did mean “defiantly” and not definitely because they sure as hell weren’t going to go down in the coal mines like their old man did, by golly, by gum. They were going to do better than that, be better than that. They were going to have a farm, raise themselves some “aminals” and maybe get themselves a purty little missus who could cook for ‘em real good. It’s a damn good thing I didn’t grow up in the days of the “one room school house,” because, while I certainly could have taught the hell out of those younger students, I can’t cook for shit.