The COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated a tremendous gap between students who have access to the technology for distance learning and those who don’t. Unfortunately, efforts to close that digital divide are opening a new gap that may ultimately be worse.
Before the virus struck, nonprofit organizations seeking to bring education to the underserved had already formed a coalition with large tech companies to address the digital divide. As the pandemic accelerates their efforts, the focus has been on the laudable short-term goal of connecting disadvantaged students with the technology and skills for distance education when opportunities for in-person education are limited by a disease.
In Connecticut, Dalio Philanthropies stepped into the picture. After abandoning its partnership with the state of Connecticut, Dalio has offered its collaboration to the Connecticut Conference of Municipalities in order to help promote online primary and secondary education. With budgets strapped to the limits, Connecticut’s towns and cities more than ever welcome private assistance. But the long-term impact on public school students must also be considered.
When the pandemic subsides, distance learning seems likely to become a much larger part of the new normal, if only because it is less expensive and disadvantaged students may find themselves on the wrong side of a new digital divide. This gap is between wealthy families who can afford in-person education and those who will be left with an electronic substitute.
Before the pandemic, successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs were already limiting screen time and seeking tech-free educations for their children. Rich parents will continue to pay for schools that provide maximum individual attention through tutoring, special services for counseling, and — this is especially true for Ivy League institutions in higher education — all sorts of pampering. After the virus took hold, wealthy families dissatisfied with online education quickly began to form private “pod schools” with in-person tutors and teachers for small groups of children.
Anyone familiar with college knows that individual attention is the rarest commodity. In elite institutions, papers are carefully analyzed by professors and soon-to-be-professor graduate assistants. The sciences offer research opportunities in top-flight laboratories, the humanities allow for frequent opportunity to travel abroad. Students are often taken under the wing of a particular faculty member. Numerous extracurricular activities, residential college living, dining — especially at places such as Princeton and Yale — and mentorship systems build networks.
By contrast, and even aside from the pandemic, there is an increasing deficit in the human connection in less well-endowed institutions. What is happening in education borrows from models deployed elsewhere in the economy. Without enough skilled caregivers, artificial intelligence is being used to provide virtual companions to the elderly. Using new conversation software, they provide computer-generated conversations in lieu of the camaraderie of human interaction so that the more isolated will not be deprived of contact. A version of this is being used in online education. Electronic teachers can drop soothing words into a lesson to bolster self-esteem and answer simple queries from students.
Those touting the use of electronic delivery systems include tech companies in pursuit of a lucrative market. They have been pushing the virtues of distance: its convenience and its economic advantages. At a time when traditional education is seen as simply too expensive, such platforms would certainly allow a vast number of students to enroll without the limits of ordinary classroom walls. Pre-constructed modules provided by private businesses might supplement classes and further diminish the cost of paying teacher salaries.
While private assistance may help public schools get through the pandemic, the end result will be another facet of what Nelson Schwartz has called the “velvet rope” economy. It is a familiar one to anyone visiting an airport or seeking medical services. A small number of consumers will have privileged entrée — behind some kind of velvet rope — while the rest must scramble for admission to needed services.
Access to human contact is the new scarce resource. And this will become especially significant in public education. The question is not whether learning by means of the internet might be useful. It is whether it will become the norm in less-advantaged schools, where students will get even less of the human attention they need to learn. How will we bridge the chasm between those with access to personal, live teaching and those who have no choice but to experience the distance of distance learning?
The lesson of education in a time of pandemic is not to adopt the easy panacea of digital learning as a permanent answer to the problems facing public education. We should be learning how invaluable human contact — both between teacher and student and among students themselves — is to education. We should be wary when some reincarnation of Professor Harold Hill, an educator confidence man, promises a new version of a digital marching band with spanking bright electronic instruments.
At its core, education is about making a personal connection. Our next duty will be to restore that connection for all students.
(Steven Wilf is a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law.)
