«Prof, can we see the cat?» Word had spread, my teacher friend tells me. The day before, while she was teaching a first-year class, her cat had jumped onto the desk—and now the third-year students wanted to see it too. Why not? What harm could it do? «Here it is!» Applause. Cheers. Streaming from the speakers. From the little rectangles of faces on the screen.
Because you've guessed it by now: the desk was actually her dining room table, and the lesson was happening over video.
One of countless stories circulating about this bewildering, unexpected time—when lockdowns forced everyone home, schools shut their doors, and all education ground to a halt. Remote learning, we were told, would preserve continuity: keep students connected to their teachers and to each other. More than that, the daily virtual visits into teachers' homes created a new sense of familiarity, a positive complicity, a renewed feeling of belonging to the class and the larger school community.
Teachers, largely satisfied with their ability to weather such a catastrophe, let a certain self-satisfaction show through. Everything works perfectly—provided you have a stable internet connection (some areas don't), and a quiet space of your own at home (as Virginia Woolf could have told you), and parents who aren't bewildered by technology (some never thought a computer was necessary), and parents who speak Italian fluently, and you're not dealing with social hardship or the risk of dropping out, and above all, provided you don't have a disability.
A survey on distance learning and school inclusion, conducted during the first two months of the pandemic and answered by 3,170 teachers—nearly all of them special education specialists—found that 51% reported behavioral deterioration in their disabled students and 62% reported learning loss. Some students disappeared from the school's radar altogether.
"In two and a half months, Beatrice never had any contact with her regular classroom teachers."
"In two and a half months, Beatrice never had any contact with her regular classroom teachers."In a letter to the Corriere della Sera, the mother of Beatrice—a fourth-grader from Lombardy with severe, drug-resistant epilepsy that has also damaged her cognitive abilities—writes: "From the moment classes were suspended until now—two and a half months—Beatrice has never had any contact with her regular classroom teachers. She has met with her special education teacher nine times over video. Her personal aide has reached her regularly via video since late March, but the school never contacted me to ask whether the learning plan planned for my daughter needed any changes because of the lockdown. Nor did they send the required revised IEP (Individualized Education Plan), which the principal mentioned in his last communication had been altered (without our knowledge), with new learning goals on which Beatrice is to be evaluated. The special education teacher sent us worksheets that we tried to have Beatrice complete, but we were never asked to return them—neither to give Beatrice credit for her effort nor to give her teachers any basis for assessment. In fact, when I asked directly, I was told it wasn't necessary to return them."
Beatrice is unmotivated. She doesn't want to do her homework anymore because no one is grading it. Her regular teachers have been completely replaced by her aide—"as if she'd even notice," her mother says bitterly. The school administration hides behind abstract rules, refusing any real conversation with the family, and there's an all-but-open suggestion to take our complaints elsewhere if we don't like how things are run.
The letter reads like a true cahiers de doléances—a record of profound grievance. The consequences could be extraordinarily grave.
And yet this difficult period we're living through carries one ray of light: it forces us to reimagine the school. To make it far more flexible. To focus above all on inclusion—which requires involving the other students too. It takes courage. It takes thoughtful teachers willing to try different ideas. Real ideas, not worksheets.
There's something beautiful in the proposal of "climbing ropes"—organizing the class into small teams of three or four students, structured like a mountain rope team, with shared responsibility. The mountains are silent teachers, Goethe said. A few hours of climbing can make a scoundrel and a saint into nearly the same creature. Walking together, growing tired—that is the shortest path to brotherhood.