Tuesday, September 29, 2020

School Future is Pandemic Pods

The future of the American school system may be with pandemic pods. USA Today reports:
It's hard to say when – or if – education will ever look the same. As COVID-19 case levels spike, schools across the country turn to remote learning for the start of the fall semester.

To be safe, parents of elementary and secondary students might decide to keep their children at home. But many parents have to work, and they want their children to grow and learn as best they can.

Some families are "poding up." Learning pods, also dubbed "pandemic pods," are small groups of families that agree to do supplementary learning or complete at-home coursework together. Sometimes they hire a tutor. Sometimes they share the supervision among parents.

The trend is in part a reaction to the general feeling that online school this spring was awful, with disengaged and lonely students, hours of schoolwork, unreasonable expectations for parents and, in many cases, little new learning for children. Parents want this school year to be different. Many of them work and can't manage their kids' schoolwork alone.

The schools in many states are taking their full tax money of $10k per child, and refusing to open. Kids are being homeschooled with some electronic assistance from the school.

Parents are wising up to the fact that the schools are offering very little. There isn't much reason why the schools have to be nearby, or the kids have to be at home.

What if the parents move their kids to a friend's home who hosts 5 or 10 students who all log into distance learning services? This could potentially be much cheaper and more efficient than the public schools, and could avoid many of the school problems.

Already Leftists are denouncing this as a scheme to resegregate the public schools. Parents are likely to team up with their friends, and they are likely to be not so diverse.

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