Belligerent ghouls will open the schools
Sending kids back to their desks ignores several unwelcome questions
Well, now we know. The pubs will open “no earlier” than 12 April. You will have to sit outside, ordering food and drink from the table like some repressed American – although your substantial meal duties have been revoked. The greatest casualty of lockdown will soon be revived.
That at least is my top line of the government’s roadmap out of lockdown. Others argue that opening schools is more pressing. Boris Johnson, a prolific father himself, doubtless sympathises with the need to find others to take care of the spawn. And so from 8 March, pupils will head back to the classroom for face-to-face lessons.
This is a good thing, no? Parents will be free to work again without the little brats’ interruptions, while teachers will no longer suspect that Connor is playing Rocket League instead of studying. Learning can resume in earnest. And yet I wonder.
Outside of education, many industries have benefited from the lockdown. Office workers are among the big winners, allowed to eschew the commuting, terrible coffee, and distraction machines of open plan workspaces. Many employers I spoke to in my six-month quest for a job indicated that a mix of office and remote working will be the new norm when this is all over.
(By contrast, one psychopath told me I’d need to be in the office five days a week from January. Such employers should be in prison, if only to see how they like it.)
In the case of education there seems little appetite to adapt the sector to modern technology. At least one teacher I know grew to disdain remote learning, and she will not be alone. There are also worries that it has exacerbated inequality due to uneven access to technology, private study spaces, and supportive parents.
That said, there are some outliers. The Economist reports that some parents have been converted to homeschooling by the pandemic experience. But the consensus seems heavily weighted towards sending the kids back in, presumably on the grounds that physical learning is largely better for kids than the remote sort.
It is risky to argue with an expert consensus, especially when they have lobbyists as vicious as the British teaching unions. But snapping back to the old normal strikes me as retrograde.
For one thing, many kids will have preferred the experience of remote learning, for much the same reasons as adults. The lack of commute, access to snacks, and ability to play video games during lunch are all things I’d have enjoyed, even at the cost of interacting with friends face-to-face.
I’d also assume that some of the bullying and harassment that pupils experience is reduced with remote working. Cyberbullying will have increased, but the more routine slights that most of us experienced at school are made harder from a distance.
These are big gains for anyone, and perhaps even bigger gains among overreacting adolescents and hyperactive children. While the country at large may hail the opening of schools as progress, for many children it will mean a return to irritation, boredom, and weeks of pointless tasks. It’s a little rude to call it child prison, but not entirely unfair.
I also notice that the pressure to return kids to school seems disproportionately fuelled by the disuption to the worker bees, rather than foregone learning. Those who claim the education system is glorified babysitting have found plenty of fodder in the last year, and will not forget it.
This is without noting the confecting of grades last summer in the absence of exams. If such fake results are a good representation of student abilities, what’s the point of the tests? And if they are a bad representation, why were they awarded at all? Critics who argue exams are an expensive and cumbersome method of showing who is talented have also had a good year.
Despite this, we find ourselves on a direct route back to the old normal. Those managing the education system seem reluctant to ask obvious questions thrown up by the pandemic of what it is for, preferring to rumble along tracks laid by the Victorians. Perhaps reports of radicalism among teachers are overstated in more than the usual ways.
Heir to Blair. Labour leader Keir Starmer has taken a drubbing in recent weeks, with disquiet among lefties, some polling troubles, and a widely-panned relaunch speech. Starmer had hoped to present himself as a new Clement Attlee for the post-pandemic moment, but the Right Dishonourable is unconvinced.
Normally I’d include a few more links, but this week you’ll have to find your own entertainment. If you are short of ideas, forward the above to any teaching friends you have, and enjoy the reaction.
Jimmy