Learning Pods & Educational Inequality

“How 'Learning Pods' Could Widen the Education Gap” – Vice News, 2020, 6:56 — https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qFJZnKurXbI

The pandemic has highlighted and widened social inequality in American society. A lack of response from the federal, state, and local levels has placed more burdens on parents when it comes to educating their children. The result has been called “opportunity hoarding”— Those with expendable resources tend to thrive, while everyone else is left behind, potentially widening the already-worrisome“achievement gap”.

Here we explore how educational inequality may widen with the advent of “learning pods”, the costliest of which involves hiring a teacher/tutor to educate small groupings of students. Meanwhile, some families cannot even afford basic child care services that have become necessary in areas where public schools are closed. Sociologist Dr. L’Heureux Lewis-McCoy points out how the overall uncertainty of the situation facilitates these pandemic pods. Yet while these pods create a more stable learning environment, they might also “supercharge” a child’s education. Instead of providing students with a life raft, they’re taking off in speed boats. Sociology forces us to consider how individual actions/choices can have societal-wide repercussions, so what might the implications of this be? Is there any way to make education in the pandemic era more equitable?

From the video’s description: VICE News explores the cost of handling the educational crisis through Pandemic Learning Pods.