The Bellows (an online journal that claims to be Marxist, but seems deeply conservative in tone) recently published an article about California’s COVID-driven shift to online instruction for K-12 students. The author, a teacher, argues that what seems like a crisis to most of the people experiencing it, is also, for the tech industry and capitalism in general, an opportunity.
He notes that the Silicon Valley has contributed lavishly to support the tech needs of California schools shifting to online delivery.
However:
The tech industry has not made massive donations to medical and therapy services, which low-income students often receive through community schools. Likewise, there is no private backing for the state’s free grab-and-go meals program. Distance learning is a sleight of hand. Framed as a panacea, online education is actually the vehicle for a long-desired economic restructuring.
Online schooling will generate a treasure trove of data tech firms can buy and sell. Free meals will not.
The digitization of schools is an initial step toward digitization of society as a whole. Just as the school bell schedule was designed around the factory model, so the current model of virtual learning is training affluent students for a life of self-directed work at home. It is training low-income students for a life of no work at all.
Online education is not just preparing students for the tech industry’s economy of the future. It’s laying the ground work for education without teachers.
When online curricula are fully built and courses can run themselves there will be no need for teachers’ labor. California teachers have become the Uber drivers of education: providing a temporary service until the technology that can replace them is ready for the market.
All of this is equally applicable to higher education. Online and remote education seems tailor-made to exacerbate inequality for students and to marginalize academic labor.