Who should we educate – 2?

Continuing yesterday’s discussion of how we should think about educating kids during the Coronavirus crisis, we got the point where trying to do the greatest good for the greatest number of students (a Utilitarian approach) or minimizing inequity and unfairness (a deontological approach) left us either leaving lots of kids behind or educating no one.

To come up with alternatives, we could try a consequentialist approach.  As you might have guessed, consequentialism makes ethical judgements based on the results of our choices, rather than the motivations behind them. 

Utilitarianism is actually a type of consequentialism, one focused on a narrow set of consequences (maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain).  But since most important choices lead to many, varied outcomes, a broader consequentialist approach would look at results beyond just pleasure and pain.

For instance, since public schools – which are legally obliged to support all students to the best of their ability – face the most challenges balancing remote education with equity requirements, shutting down public schools completely to avoid leaving anyone behind might be “fair” from a deontological standpoint.  But the consequences of such a choice would be that the entire public-school population would fall behind students attending schools that do not have the same legal requirements as public schools (like private and religious schools).

Notice how pulling the lens back so that we can see the consequences of our actions across an entire, diverse educational ecosystem helped expose that a deontological desire to maximize equity within a single school system might actually create more inequity once we take into account the fact that all school systems will not be making the same choices.

A wider-angle view also exposes the number of things schools do for kids that are not about teachers teaching them in a classroom (physical or virtual).  For example, many kids get their only nutritious meals at school, and while all schools (public and private) support students’ social and emotional needs, as well as special learning needs, public schools do so within a framework of legal accommodations involving IEPs, support specialists, and resource coordinators. 

This means that when we say schools should continue to support students through the crisis, this might involve remote teaching, but it might involve figuring out how to deliver them lunches on a regular basis, or giving students and parents access to learning specialists while everyone is in lockdown.

If you look at the web sites of state departments of education, you will see that most states are prioritizing meal delivery alongside attempts to get virtual learning operations up and running, and many are trying to bring as much of their student support network online as they can.  Focusing too narrowly on maximizing student learning could obscure the other important work school systems are trying to accomplish, and how a broad-based, consequentialist understanding might help us balance these many needs more effectively. 

For example, in theory every dollar spent on supporting teachers managing remote learning could be seen as a dollar not spent on delivering lunches to needy students.  At the same time, if teachers stuck in their homes can make online education work for most students stuck in their homes without tons of ongoing support from districts and states, district and state bureaucracies can focus on other aforementioned priorities knowing that schools’ educational missions are under control.

Similarly, since it is likely easier to teach middle and high-school age students (who are used to lecture-based classes) using online tools, getting machinery up and running for those grades first could free up time and resources to support primary school students who cannot be expected to sit in front of a screen or work independently for hours on end.

If we pull back the lens still further, the consequences of making school work – however imperfectly – for the maximum number of students is that could give parents (including parents working in vital healthcare fields) the space to do something other than manage their kids (including their kids’ education) every hour of the day – such as work that can save people’s lives.

When faced with nothing but bad options, one can easily reduce decision-making to a narrow set of rules (such as utility versus motivation) or zero in on one variable (such as how to budget scarce human and financial resources) while missing the fact that one set of choices has consequences that will impact the next set.  But a broad-based consequentialist approach that takes into account the complexity of the situations we are trying to impact might provide the best guidance to those making the hardest decisions they have ever had to make.