For-Profit Remote Learning Is a Disaster for Students and Teachers Alike
The pandemic taught us two lessons: in-person learning is optimal, and remote learning is sometimes necessary. We should improve public digital learning infrastructure, or else private companies will corner the market and use it to undermine public education.
We can either proactively define the relationship between remote and in-person schooling, or we can watch from the sidelines as private companies claim a monopoly over distance learning and use it to undermine public education. (Giovanni Gagliardi / Unsplash)
In spring of 2020, we saw signs that billionaires and neoliberal politicians were looking to use the COVID-19 lockdown to finally eliminate one of the last remaining venues where Americans convene in the practice of democratic self-governance: the brick-and-mortar schoolhouse.
Plutocrat-funded techno-optimists giddily suggested we use the temporary requirement of virtual learning to test-drive models that give families more “flexibility” and “freedom.” Then-governor Andrew Cuomo formed a partnership between New York state and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation to explore a post-pandemic future without “all these physical classrooms.” Betsy DeVos announced $180 million in grants for states to “rethink” K–12 learning, and her cohort of privatization pushers began licking their chops.
Advocates of public education were rightly horrified, recognizing that this would amount to a further hollowing out of one of our last remaining public goods. Fortunately, a combination of factors turned the discourse emphatically back in favor of preserving in-person K–12 learning as the American standard — for now.
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