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There was a dream of remote education, where the best educators in the world can reach out and teach students anywhere in the world, and be a great equalizer of

There was a dream of remote education, where the best educators in the world can reach out and teach students anywhere in the world, and be a great equalizer of education. This dream was killed by COVID, and likely it'll be another generation before it is even considered seriously again. The epitaph is not yet written for remote work and work-from-home, but I think we need to wait a couple of years before we can consider a success or a failure. There are troubling signs of its failure that I see at the larger tech companies; their culture has been ripped apart and reassembled into a Frankenstein imitation of its previous state. For better, for worse, who can tell, but subjectively, the change mostly seems for the worse. Management is completely unable to adapt and has moved even further in the direction of only pursuing work that can be accurately scheduled and whose execution is therefore trivial if laborious, and the only people who can get anything novel done are those that can execute while simultaneously snowballing their management with fairy tales about work estimates and milestones. We'll have to keep an eye out in ten years for the companies that emerge out of the fertile ground left by the workers at these companies that find they have built up a repertoire of skills that they are no longer allowed to use.

ghaff 4y ago
>There was a dream of remote education, where the best educators in the world can reach out and teach students anywhere in the world, and be a great equalizer of education. Realistically the dream was always that large hall, largely broadcast, lectures could be replaced with video of world-class lecturers. And while there are obstacles--most schools don't want to replace half their course content with videos--it's eminently doable. The key point though is that the other half of the content and in-person assistance can't be replaced in the same manner nor can courses requiring equipment, hand-on work, etc.
yamtaddle 4y ago
> There was a dream of remote education, where the best educators in the world can reach out and teach students anywhere in the world, and be a great equalizer of education. > This dream was killed by COVID, and likely it'll be another generation before it is even considered seriously again. I think the future is that rich countries are gonna Baumol's Cost Disease their way out of being able to pay in-person teachers. I think we're trending that way already, in fact, and Covid wage-hikes in much of the rest of the economy, plus the most recent anti-educator (don't think that's what it is? Ask some teachers how they've perceived and experienced it) political movements (anti-anti-Covid-measure movements, shitty, ambiguous anti-LGBTQ and anti-teaching-about-slavery legislation) have pushed us right to the edge of that cliff. For the US, at least, I expect: 1) We'll see falling teacher quality over the next few years, due to declining relative wages and deteriorating work conditions. We won't spend enough to reverse this trend—we already need an ~20% wage hike just to stop the bleeding, let alone reverse damage already done, I'd guess. 2) Rich people will continue to use tutors or private schools and get excellent small-class-size in-person education for their kids. Mid-priced private schools may become more common as this expands down-market to cater to people who can't afford $45k+/yr, but can afford maybe $15k or $20k per year, and are now motivated, by declining quality even in "good" public school districts, to pay it. 3) There will likely be some remote learning experiments to try to counter #1. I expect we're going to see the phrase "online charter school" a lot more in the coming couple decades. But the education will still be worse than what we had before, and way worse than what the folks in #2 are getting—though, maybe, better than the hollowed-out in-person schools. 4) We may start to aggressively import teachers from poor countries to try to cover the gap. This may even work—I think it's got a better chance than other options, at least. If it's not a Federal initiative, it'll likely mostly happen mainly in blue states and exacerbate the education gap between "blue" and "red". IOW I do expect we will see fairly extensive online education experiments in the near future—but not for the reasons one might hope.
- andrewla 4y ago
  Putting aside the general trends you've identifier, in the spirit of my previous comment, #3 -- "online charter school", I think this is definitely, 100%, absolutely, absotively, definitely, 100% dead. Just not happening -- the COVID remote school experiment was a failure on every axis other than public health, and everyone from parents to children to teachers to administrators acknowledges this.
  - yamtaddle 4y ago
    Right—I just think public school districts are already in a bad personnel crunch, and that they'll revive online options (not all of them, but quite a few will try it) rather than significantly increase wages, because bad online school will be preferable to 40+ students per class and/or to holding classes only half-time and having kids do "study hall" in a gym or cafeteria the rest of the time, which is already de-facto the state of things at some schools in my area—including "good" ones—that are losing teachers and can't get more or get enough substitutes. These issues are largely hidden from parents so far, but that's not gonna last as it keeps getting worse, and they'll demand a fix. They could fix it with a large wage hike, but I don't think they'll do it, and they'd need to be doing that now not to still have a significant gap in coverage for at least a couple years. I do expect many or most of these online experiments will happen in physical school buildings, not at home, though, because parents want the daycare aspect—two teachers monitoring & assisting 100 online-learning students in a big room, or whatever, or 30 students in a room looking at screens with some kind of low-wage paraprofessional, or something. I think we're in for more online learning efforts because I don't think we can afford enough decent-or-better in-person teachers anymore to support the old model. But maybe I'll be surprised and we'll pass far-larger school budgets instead. [EDIT] Though, I guess it's also possible we'll just accept public schools taking a permanent nose-dive in quality post-Covid and not do anything to try to fix it. I'd say that's more likely than significantly increasing teacher wages, in fact.
paxys 4y ago
> There was a dream of remote education, where the best educators in the world can reach out and teach students anywhere in the world, and be a great equalizer of education. I don't think any actual parent shared this "dream". People don't realize that the school system is primarily a daycare. Education is a secondary concern for most.

ghaff 4y ago

>There was a dream of remote education, where the best educators in the world can reach out and teach students anywhere in the world, and be a great equalizer of education. Realistically the dream was always that large hall, largely broadcast, lectures could be replaced with video of world-class lecturers. And while there are obstacles--most schools don't want to replace half their course content with videos--it's eminently doable. The key point though is that the other half of the content and in-person assistance can't be replaced in the same manner nor can courses requiring equipment, hand-on work, etc.

yamtaddle 4y ago

> There was a dream of remote education, where the best educators in the world can reach out and teach students anywhere in the world, and be a great equalizer of education. > This dream was killed by COVID, and likely it'll be another generation before it is even considered seriously again. I think the future is that rich countries are gonna Baumol's Cost Disease their way out of being able to pay in-person teachers. I think we're trending that way already, in fact, and Covid wage-hikes in much of the rest of the economy, plus the most recent anti-educator (don't think that's what it is? Ask some teachers how they've perceived and experienced it) political movements (anti-anti-Covid-measure movements, shitty, ambiguous anti-LGBTQ and anti-teaching-about-slavery legislation) have pushed us right to the edge of that cliff. For the US, at least, I expect: 1) We'll see falling teacher quality over the next few years, due to declining relative wages and deteriorating work conditions. We won't spend enough to reverse this trend—we already need an ~20% wage hike just to stop the bleeding, let alone reverse damage already done, I'd guess. 2) Rich people will continue to use tutors or private schools and get excellent small-class-size in-person education for their kids. Mid-priced private schools may become more common as this expands down-market to cater to people who can't afford $45k+/yr, but can afford maybe $15k or $20k per year, and are now motivated, by declining quality even in "good" public school districts, to pay it. 3) There will likely be some remote learning experiments to try to counter #1. I expect we're going to see the phrase "online charter school" a lot more in the coming couple decades. But the education will still be worse than what we had before, and way worse than what the folks in #2 are getting—though, maybe, better than the hollowed-out in-person schools. 4) We may start to aggressively import teachers from poor countries to try to cover the gap. This may even work—I think it's got a better chance than other options, at least. If it's not a Federal initiative, it'll likely mostly happen mainly in blue states and exacerbate the education gap between "blue" and "red". IOW I do expect we will see fairly extensive online education experiments in the near future—but not for the reasons one might hope.

andrewla 4y ago
Putting aside the general trends you've identifier, in the spirit of my previous comment, #3 -- "online charter school", I think this is definitely, 100%, absolutely, absotively, definitely, 100% dead. Just not happening -- the COVID remote school experiment was a failure on every axis other than public health, and everyone from parents to children to teachers to administrators acknowledges this.
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  Right—I just think public school districts are already in a bad personnel crunch, and that they'll revive online options (not all of them, but quite a few will try it) rather than significantly increase wages, because bad online school will be preferable to 40+ students per class and/or to holding classes only half-time and having kids do "study hall" in a gym or cafeteria the rest of the time, which is already de-facto the state of things at some schools in my area—including "good" ones—that are losing teachers and can't get more or get enough substitutes. These issues are largely hidden from parents so far, but that's not gonna last as it keeps getting worse, and they'll demand a fix. They could fix it with a large wage hike, but I don't think they'll do it, and they'd need to be doing that now not to still have a significant gap in coverage for at least a couple years. I do expect many or most of these online experiments will happen in physical school buildings, not at home, though, because parents want the daycare aspect—two teachers monitoring & assisting 100 online-learning students in a big room, or whatever, or 30 students in a room looking at screens with some kind of low-wage paraprofessional, or something. I think we're in for more online learning efforts because I don't think we can afford enough decent-or-better in-person teachers anymore to support the old model. But maybe I'll be surprised and we'll pass far-larger school budgets instead. [EDIT] Though, I guess it's also possible we'll just accept public schools taking a permanent nose-dive in quality post-Covid and not do anything to try to fix it. I'd say that's more likely than significantly increasing teacher wages, in fact.

paxys 4y ago

> There was a dream of remote education, where the best educators in the world can reach out and teach students anywhere in the world, and be a great equalizer of education. I don't think any actual parent shared this "dream". People don't realize that the school system is primarily a daycare. Education is a secondary concern for most.