Intangible magic of classroom missing

Techno teaching is not the way of the future, writes Peter Lyons.

I’M not sure about this zoom teaching. For the first week in lockdown I taught my students via this remote technology. They were remarkably quiet and compliant. Then my nephew advised me that my microphone was on mute and my iPad pointing in the wrong direction.

I have rectified both issues. I have set up my LaZBoy chair by the fridge with my iPad pointed in the right direction to transmit knowledge and wisdom to my eager students.

What should be a pleasant teaching environment has morphed into a rapidly expanding waistline. At the start of lockdown I set a goal of being able to touch my toes. Now I’m struggling to see them.

But, most importantly, remote teaching through technology just feels dull and sterile compared to the real thing. I miss the banter. I miss the cut and thrust of the classroom environment.

I miss getting distracted by skilled practitioners of the art of classroom subterfuge. Of going offtopic because a lateral thinking deviant asked an obtuse question. That’s a huge part of the fun. I miss telling jokes to indifferent audiences.

I miss young Ferris who sits up the front and passes loud foul wind then blames poor Ben who sits next to him. I miss the lame excuses for arriving late. My iPhone fell into the toilet bowl while I was filming a cockroach climbing the wall. I was giving CPR to a visiting mother who was having a premature delivery.

With distance learning the students sometimes don’t even arrive. I worry what’s happening in their households. What stresses are occurring.

Technology has been hailed as the future of education. This misses the most vital aspect of teaching. It’s about human interactions. It’s the intangible aspects of physical and social proximity between the teacher and the students themselves.

Sometimes, you get a class that just clicks. It’s magic. Huge synergies and lots of fun. That doesn’t happen with online. If this distance approach to schooling was effective, teachers would long ago have abandoned their craft to the technology of distant book learning. It never happened.

There is something about the magic of human interaction that enhances the learning process. Our current schooling system does not always get it right. Far from it. Our schools are hardly inviting places for many students. They often have the dismal atmospheres of other public institutions such as hospitals and prisons. Unfortunately, our attitude to schooling has tended towards a ‘‘one size fits all model’’.

There are large aspects of social control in our schooling system that often detract from the essence of pure education. There are a few teachers who are in the wrong profession and should have been informed of that long ago.

There are students whose special needs and ugly home environments make normal classroom learning nigh impossible.

But remote techno teaching is not the way of the future. It often feels like talking down a deep dark well. It lacks the human touch and subtle interactions that are crucial to quality teaching and learning. I’m looking forward to getting back to real teaching .

I’m even looking forward to Ferris’ farts. From a significant distance.

Peter Lyons teaches economics at St Peter’s College in Epsom.