Disaster Capitalism, Online Instruction, and What Covid-19 Is Teaching Us About Public Schools and Teachers
The last few weeks have been surreal as we learn about the Corona Virus and how to protect ourselves and our neighbors. One of the largest disruptions has been school closings in order to contain the virus. No one knows when schools will reopen.
While Covid-19 is of utmost concern, parents and educators, who’ve worried about the replacement of brick-and-mortar schools and teachers with anytime, anyplace, online instruction, wonder what this pandemic will mean to public education long term. Will this disaster be used to end public schools, replacing instruction with online competency-based learning?
We’re reminded of disaster capitalism, a concept highlighted by Naomi Klein in The Shock Doctrine: The Rise of Disaster Capitalism, how Katrina was used in New Orleans to convert traditional public schools to charter schools. Within nineteen months, with most of the city’s poor residents still in exile, New Orleans’ public school system had been almost completely replaced by privately run charter schools. (p. 5-6). Who thought that could happen?
The transitioning of technology into public schools, not simply as a supplemental tool for teachers to use at their discretion, but as a transformative means to remove teachers from the equation, has been highlighted with groups like Digital Promise and CONTINUE READING: Disaster Capitalism, Online Instruction, and What Covid-19 Is Teaching Us About Public Schools and Teachers