With the return of emergency remote learning here in Ontario we are once again hearing from people about how bad it is. In this post, Michelle Schira Hagerman presents herself as someone who was in favour of online learning two years ago (while at the same time writing "physical schools and teaching are essential for the vast majority of students and communities"). Today, she recants, citing an open letter from 500 Ontario doctors (out of a total of about 30,000) arguing "the harms of school closures are extensive and have impacted academic, social and emotional, and physical and mental health domains."
My own take is that I don't understand how Covid can be transmissive everywhere else (stores, restaurants, fitness centres, sports arenas) and magically not transmissive in and around schools. I do understand how 'emergency remote learning' can lead to terrible learning experiences. And that crappy internet leads to crappy internet experiences. But in the two years we've been dealing with this, nobody has fixed this because they just assume we're all going back to the way it was before, and that it was OK before. We aren't. It wasn't. The pandemic has laid bare major social problems that won't simply disappear even after schools open.
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