What if schools are closed next year, too?
The rest of the 2019-20 school year across Canada will be either conducted entirely by digital learning, or almost exclusively by digital learning.
Preparations for that are incomplete, as this article in today’s Toronto Star makes clear: “Ontario school boards ‘moving mountains’ to start teaching students online during COVID-19 lockdown” The same issues of fairness for poorer families without computers or Internet access, or for those in isolated rural areas, exist across the country.
Yet, that’s only the tip of the iceberg for Canada’s education systems in what I predicted earlier will be an increasingly-digital world after COVID-19
It will be tough enough for students from elementary school to university to complete this academic year properly.
But what virtually no one is talking about now is whether schools across Canada will be able to reopen — and stay open — for the 2020-21 academic year. That’s a very real possibility and the time to think about solutions is now, not in September. Even if they can be partially open, advanced materials and tools for online learning will be a necessity.
Experts think the current coronavirus wave will ebb in the summer in Canada because it prefers cold, dry weather to spread. But they predict a second wave will hit this fall and that the virus may be an issue for us for up to two years. At the same time, there may be no effective vaccine against it until the first quarter of 2021.
As I noted in my earlier posts in this thread, I’m not trying to scare people who already have enough to worry about. However, ignoring possible long-term effects is foolish.
So where’s the plan from our governments, our school boards, our teachers, and our parents for what to do if those predictions hold true?
The reality is that there are no such plans. There should be.
Some ideas:
Governments should fund the building of the infrastructure for increased Internet access across Canada, especially in remote rural and northern regions. The existing telecoms can do that but they won’t because it’s not economical. Make it economical for them. The result will be the hiring of thousands of workers and a truly fair system for all students forced to deal with extended online learning.
School boards, teachers and educational resource companies should be thinking now about the best way to teach digitally when it’s the ONLY way to teach, not an add-on to existing in-person classes. Think strategically, not tactically. Develop the necessary new products now.
Parents should be thinking ahead to what changes they need to make in their families and work routines if schools are not open in the fall. Parents may be still working remotely, too. Are the computers, phones, WiFi in your home going to be able to handle that? If you’re already making compromises about who can use what when or watch what when, you better start thinking about upgrading your home network and determining what new procedures or tools you need to continue working from home for an extended period.
If we all fail to plan now, we will only make the problems worse in the future.
