Inequality was Never so Visible as in 2020

Emily Badger. Inequality was Never so Visible as in 2020.  What did we Learn? New York Times, December 29, 2020. B3.

Americans also stopped broadly sharing libraries, movie theaters, train stations and public school classrooms, the spaces that sill created common experience in increasingly unequal communities. Even the D.M.S., with its cross-section of life in a single room, wasn't that any more. 

 COMMENT

     Libraries are a place where people from different socio-economic classes can mingle on an equal basis. The article describes how COVID has shut down such interactions so that some people are in a privileged bubble while others are doing low-paid, insecure work to deliver goods and services to the privileged.

More SLC Secondary School Students are Flunking Classes

 Heather May. "More SLC Secondary School Students are Flunking Classes. Salt Lake Tribune. December 6, 2020. pp. A1; 8,9.

In addition about 50 students now come to the school for their classes.  They log on while working in the school library so they can get help learning how to use the technology and develop habits for online learning, she said. 

 COMMENT

COVID-19 has caused a natural experiment with a sudden, widespread shift to online education.  As I would have predicted, it's a massive flop.  The article describes that even privileged kids with new computers and private spaces at home are failing to turn in assignments and failing classes.  Kids who aren't adept with computers don't even stand a chance.  One major barrier to online learning has always been that you have to learn to use the technology before you can even begin to learn anything.  Instead of spending class time on the subject matter, students are forced to spend time learning to use obscure software that has no uses or applications outside of a school setting.