This Is Online Learning: A Commencement Speech by David Faster Wallose
Greetings parents and congratulations! You are still alive. There are these two young children commenting on a Twitch stream, and they both happen to read a comment from boomer-millenial-whatever: “How’s the online learning going?” And the two children keep watching the livestream of their favorite gamer until one messages the other: “What the hell is online learning?”
This is a standard requirement of US education administrators trying to comfort their communities as they face a pandemic without any confidence in the current administration’s ability to do anything but make things worse, that they use didactic little parable-ish stories. Of course, the original parable involved two young fish swimming along and meeting an older fish who asks, “How’s the water?” but the image of being immersed in fluids in close proximity to one another would surely trigger paroxysms of panic. Such is the nature of our times.
The point of the story is merely that the most obvious, important realities are often the ones that are hardest to see and talk about. Stated as an English sentence, of course, this is just a banal platitude, but the fact is: you’re fucked. Online learning is a myth. It is more lethal than the Emperor’s New Clothes and less satisfying than Santa. It is the threat of hell with no promise of heaven. It is Groundhog Day, but without Bill Murray. There is no learning online.
Of course the main requirement of speeches like this is that I’m supposed to talk about your school’s ability to provide the same quality of education online that students would enjoy if they were in school. Which is true, but not in the way you might hope. Because students have the same opportunities to learn that they’ve always had: they have access to teachers each day. They have carefully curated reading lists and activities. They have texts and resources available. But they can also mute their teachers and each other on Google Meet and kick each other out of class, and, no matter the age level, they won’t read the lesson plan, check their email, or make any attempt to figure things out for themselves before emailing their teachers “what r we doing 2day?!”
Schools claim they are “teaching students how to think.” The really significant education in thinking isn’t really about the capacity to think, but rather about the choice of what to think about. You could think about whether or not your husband/father has been secretly amassing a hoard of weapons to “defend the family,” and that this is the same man who severed a finger trying to build a birdhouse and can’t walk up a flight of stairs without wheezing. Or you could think about the fact that social distancing at home with your family for several weeks seems to be an increasingly less attractive option than death. You could also think about the election that may or may not happen in November. You could. But I wouldn’t recommend that.
Which is why online learning is so essential. It is the alternative to thinking. Try to follow the links sent by teachers who have avoided every workshop on using Google Suite. Complete the worksheets your least favorite teacher bought on “teachers paying teachers” and then upload your answers on SeeSaw, Managebac, GoogleClassroom, Drive, and email them directly. I’m sure they’re going to give you thoughtful feedback on everything you’ve written. If you’ve written anything, though most likely you just went straight to the questions without reading the prompt and wrote an impressive amount of bullshit in record time, and really, that’s the beauty of online learning: It’s a Mobius strip of completely intangible frustration sent via the interwebs in a perfect circuit of vexation. You will never leave the couch, but you will never feel more exhausted.
The point here is that I think this is what “teaching how to think” is really supposed to mean. It is about the real value of a real education, which has almost nothing to do with knowledge, and everything to do with simple awareness; awareness of what is so real and essential, so hidden in plain sight all around us, all the time, that we have to keep reminding ourselves over and over:
“Toilet paper.”
I’m kidding. There’s no more toilet paper!
But rather:
“This is online learning.”
“This is online learning.”
It is unimaginably hard to do this, to stay conscious and alive in the adult world day in and day out. Which means yet another grand cliché turns out to be true: your online learning really IS education.
I wish you way more than luck.
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