Some questions about remote and distance learning.

This column is coming out late. I apologize to the few and brave readers, if I have any, but I've never worked as hard as I do now! Working from home exasperates the level of absolute surplus value. I teach at a higher education institution that has temporarily suspended its in-person activities due to the Covid-19 pandemic. Therefore, I have to prepare remote classes, and this is a gigantic amount of work. Just the programs I use to teach the classes are three: one to open and close classes and take attendance, another to make the material and content available to students, and another to open the virtual classroom.

I am able to work from home. I have a formal job, with a signed work contract, governed by the CLT (Brazilian labor law). I can afford an internet provider that allows me to browse the web at very high speeds. I have a PC and my partner has another. In addition to our PCs, our family cell phone plan allows us to use data almost without limits. This reality is not the same as that of the vast majority of Brazilian households, whose working conditions have worsened significantly since the 2016 coup d'état. 

In 2014, a year in which the economic crisis had not yet strongly affected the country, Brazil ended the year with 41,22 million formal jobs. The number of informal workers reached approximately 5 million people in the same year. From 2014 to 2019, the number of informal workers reached 41,1% of Brazilian workers, equivalent to 38,4 million, while the number of workers with formal employment contracts in 2019 was 33,7 million, about 8 million fewer than in 2014, with 11,6 million unemployed. Among these workers, the majority have precarious access or no access to a reliable internet connection.

This data is important in the current context of the Covid-19 pandemic for analyzing the proposal of the federal, state, and municipal governments that encourage preschools, schools, and higher education institutions to adopt distance learning or remote teaching methodologies, as recommended by the Ministry of Education (distance learning is defined as that designed to deliver entirely online courses). online and the remote classes are designed online (to temporarily replace in-person classes for any reason). Teachers who are still fortunate enough to be employed should be aware! They are not given the option of choosing whether or not to adopt remote and/or distance learning; this is a decision for the employer, the owner of the educational institution, or the state, the teacher's employer. If a teacher refuses to adopt non-face-to-face teaching methodologies, they risk being fired. Some are finding it all wonderful. Many students who have the infrastructure at home that allows them to attend this type of class satisfactorily also develop a positive opinion about it. So what are the problems? A real risk for the teacher is that once the employer finds that the experience with these distance and remote teaching methodologies is positive, which is almost always confused with increased profit margins, they may "discontinue" members of their faculty who will become unemployed. Labor laws, already so vilified by the post-2016 coup governments, still guarantee teachers certain rights such as predetermined working hours, pre-established class schedules, a restricted number of students in the classroom, vacations, and weekly rest. Distance learning could lead to an increase in unemployment for the profession: depending on the application used, a teacher can teach up to 250 students simultaneously. If 250 students are taught by a single teacher in the same virtual class or classroom, this will mean that up to nine teachers have lost their jobs, considering 25 students as the ideal maximum number per in-person class. The working conditions of most teachers are far from this ideal number, and many work with classes that have a much larger number of students. However, the legislation allows for non-face-to-face classes with very large groups.

Another consequence is that, if limits are not imposed, or if the teacher themselves does not impose limits on their availability to assist students and their guardians, they may work far more than eight hours a day, teaching classes, assisting students and their guardians, preparing lessons, and grading assignments. Besides harming the quality of education, this can also lead to teacher burnout and depression.

A teacher working from home will add household chores and childcare to their teaching duties, becoming overburdened and exhausted by this double workload. They need a welcoming environment to develop their teaching activities and be able to concentrate on them, and cannot be preoccupied with other tasks and activities when preparing or teaching their classes. At the end of these classes, they need a place where they can rest, and their home needs to be a place that provides rest and access to leisure during their non-working hours. How can this goal be achieved while working from home?

Add to all this the cost of internet access, which will be the teacher's responsibility and must be added to their monthly expenses. Distance or remote learning demands broadband internet, which needs to be faster the greater the number of students participating. This type of class requires interaction between the student and the teacher, and this interaction presupposes the exchange of digital data between the two parties. A slow internet connection makes this exchange tedious, tiring, and even impossible. It can be argued that the teacher will save on transportation costs to their workplace and can afford a broadband internet provider, but the cost of the internet may be higher than the transportation cost, depending on the distances traveled and the broadband speed contracted. Not to mention that a teacher who walks to work will have an unforeseen additional cost that will weigh on their family budget.

At the administrative level, the costs of preparing support materials for distance or remote classes, the platforms used to make them available to teachers and students, and internet connectivity will come out of the education departments' budgets, whether they produce their own support materials, create their own platform and internet provider, or contract services from private companies to produce everything necessary. In this second scenario, part of the always scarce resources of these departments will be transferred to large private sector groups. Private educational institutions will then pass these costs on to students and their guardians. 

If these distance and remote classes are implemented soon, this will entail more costs for students and their guardians. The school year has already begun, the teaching materials have already been purchased and used, and this has had a cost. Many families will not be able to afford the additional expenses of acquiring support materials for non-face-to-face classes, should these be passed on to students.

Regarding students, they are affected by almost all the problems that affect teachers. Most students in the public school system, at all levels, as well as those in the private system, come from low-income families. A large portion of these families' income is used to provide essential services, and a great effort is made to ensure that all family members can pay tuition, transportation costs, and food expenses that enable them to study. Internet access is generally via mobile phone plans with data download and upload limits. Mobile phone networks have serious coverage problems in urban areas – distant neighborhoods, poor communities, smaller cities – and in rural areas. The inconsistency of these network signals can exclude students with lower monthly incomes from distance learning. To access the internet via mobile phone, it is necessary for the phone to receive and send data, excluding many students who own cheaper mobile phones that do not have data transfer capabilities from accessing classes.

Finally, distance and remote classes can cause health problems for teachers and students due to incorrect posture in front of the connected device and exposure to the brightness of the computer, tablet, or cell phone screen for long periods.

And one last question to conclude: how will students who eat their meals at school get food if they stay home attending classes? onlineThe education departments and the Ministry of Education are presenting distance and remote classes as the great solution to this crisis situation. In addressing this issue, it seems they haven't fully considered the real possibility of generating even more social exclusion for marginalized segments of the population. 

Distance learning methodologies will further precariousize the already precarious work of most teachers. Through them, employers will be able to impose worse working conditions on teachers, with increased workloads and hours coupled with reduced salaries. As for students, if these methodologies become dominant, the school will lose its socializing function. As a consequence, social groups may emerge formed by egocentric and individualistic individuals, whose social interaction and coexistence will tend to be marked by intolerance and conflict.