Distance Learning? Works Well, Right?
October 29, 2020
I spotted this article from the ever reliable “real” news outfit Daily Mail: “Boy, 9, Is Forced to Sit on Concrete Outside His Closed Elementary School with His Laptop on a Cardboard Box Because His Family Can’t Afford Wi-Fi for Online Classes.” The write includes a story of the young boy kneeling in front of a cardboard box and using his laptop. The desk looks like a cardboard box.
Observations:
- Online access is not available to some students
- The young man — if the write up is “real” — wants to learn
- The modern world may offer many delights to those who can afford them. To those with fewer resources, life is not a bowl of cherries.
The cost of inequality can be considered in the context of knowledge lost. Perhaps the whiz kid economists who preach efficiency, fast twitch action, and Austrian economic theory can solve this young man’s problem?
No wait.
Apparently an individual with resources stepped forward and made online access possible.
That’s the spirit: Asset reallocation in action. Plus, perhaps we should expect the young boy to do more: Build a desk out of scrap wood, learn to code so he can piggyback on a neighbor’s Wi-Fi, or just embrace street crime?
I think education is a better option.
Stephen E Arnold, October 29, 2020
Comments
-
- Subscribe to Beyond Search
Feature archive
News archive
-
