First off, many thanks to everyone who joined yesterday’s webinar kicking off the launch of Critical Thinking Essentials. And for those who long for the days when MOOCs was the subject du jour, some thoughts on the role MOOCs might play in the present crisis were just published at the MIT Press Reader.
These might seem like inauspicious times to be reading or writing about any subject other than the latest statistics and instructions from CDC, including topics regarding online education during a period when the world’s educational systems have been forced to engage in history’s greatest (and unplanned) experiment in remote learning. At the same time, it is exactly when choices are forced upon us that we should reflect on whether options we select represent steps into the future, or temporary expedients.
On the surface, our academic mission seems clear: educate as many people as we can in ways that preserves educational equity. But in a world of finite (even shrinking) resources, when everyday steps we would take during an emergency (like those that require physical proximity to those who need our help) are off the table, we are going to have to make choices that necessarily leave people behind.
Here is where another topic I’ve written about in the past can play a role: philosophy, specifically ethical philosophy that becomes extraordinarily relevant when we can no longer pretend there are win-win solutions to every problem.
If you’ve taken an ethics course, such as Michael Sandel famous and still available Justice MOOC, they tend to begin by introducing students to Utilitarianism, a framework in which ethical decisions are made through a calculus based on maximizing good and minimizing bad (pleasure vs. pain in Utilitarian parlance).
This concept is easy for students to grasp since nearly every move we make as individuals (from eating when we’re hungry, to shifting position in our seat to improve comfort, to avoiding unnecessary conflict in a time of stress) can be understood in the context of maximizing pleasure (such as comfort and amity) and limiting pain (such as discomfort and conflict). Yet once you go beyond the individual, Utilitarianism offers more limited guidance.
For example, a Utilitarian approach to the shutdown of the nation’s physical educational infrastructure might lead us to try to educate the greatest number of individuals possible through online tools and other techniques that allows those capable of learning at a distance to do so with the full understanding that such a system will not serve all learners. So, with Utilitarianism as our guide, our job would be to maximize the number of those we educate and keep the number of those we don’t as low as possible.
Such a choice might seem callous, especially since those who fall through the king-size cracks in such a system represent the most vulnerable among us, such as poor children without access to computer hardware or the Internet, students who receive substantial support at school (from special needs services to their only nutritious meals of the day), and those who do not have families with the resources needed to support students learning from home.
An alternative to letting the numbers be our guide would be to take a deontological ethical approach that stresses the morality of our actions, rather than their consequences (Utilitarian or otherwise). Deontological ethics could have us ask whether it is fair to take an educational system that already suffers from lack of equity and make it even more inequitable by only serving students capable of participating in remote=learning activities.
Given how unfair such a system would be to the most vulnerable among us, that could lead us to a more equitable solution that involves simply shutting down educational systems that cannot serve everyone. Such a choice might be ethical if equity was the only good we were pursuing. But what about other goods, such as giving those with the ability learn the chance to do so, or giving parents (including many single mothers who staff the nation’s vital healthcare systems) ways to keep their kids busy during the work day?
If Utilitarianism tells us to live with abandoning the most needy, a deontological approach with equity as the goal could lead us to abandoning educating anyone (including the needy) to avoid gross unfairness. While neither approach might seem appealing, they both represent genuine ethical decision-making in that they try to provide guidance when choosing between equally problematical options.
Are there alternatives? Find out in Part 2.
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