...Given the experiences related above, I wondered (“Education Crisis: From Pre-K to Higher Ed, Students Face Unequal Access During Coronavirus Shutdown,” Democracy Now, April 29, 2020) how online instruction worked as masses of students had this kind of instruction as the only source of their education during this pandemic: This is Noliwe Rooks author of Cutting School Privatization, Segregation, and End of Public Education:
I think, as we’ve seen in so many other areas, the pandemic is exposing, just shining a light on, inequalities that are already there, as we see people who are impacted, who are falling ill, tend to be poor, tend to be Black, Latinx. The children who are suffering the most with this closing down of schools share similar kinds of demographics.
One of the things that is perplexing — and hopefully we can come out of the other end of this really taking this seriously — is we had absolutely no conversation. There were no emergency plans for closing of schools, for ceasing education. When it became clear that it was putting teachers and students and, as you mentioned, the numbers of educational workers who have lost their lives or fallen ill attempting to stay in classrooms, we had no plans for what happens if you take schooling offline. We quickly, across the country, New York City and elsewhere, decided on remote education.
Read the entire article in CounterPunch.org
