Firstly Happy New Year to our friends, followers, customers and partners. Parents in many parts of the world tried various learning alternatives when the pandemic first struck. One was a “Learning Pod”: seen as a great short-term fix this solution, a new term for families to band together and hire teachers to either replace or increase virtual learning, was initially intended to be a stopgap solution but did not always work out. Initially seen as an easy fix, the reality has been quite different. Many parents discovered “that even a carefully orchestrated group is no substitute for an institutional classroom”. The realisation that a brilliant idea in principle entails many decisions that without preparation or experience can lead to conflicts of interests by all participants, is one shared by many, but has “no principal to handle disputes, no aides to assist in the classroom and no counselors to offer guidance. Parents, often with no education experience, select the teachers, set the curriculum and choose the classmates. When problems emerge, they’re the ones making decisions about other people’s children”. While no education centre is perfect, perhaps a case of “Better the Devil you know”…
nytimes.com/2020/12/22/style/learning-pods-pros-and-cons.html