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School systems and colleges across the U.S. have turned, once again, to remote learning amid the outbreak of the COVID-19 Omicron variant, which has sparked new safety concerns and created staffing issues.
Chicago announced Monday that it landed on an agreement with the city’s teachers union to get children back into the classroom for in-person learning on Wednesday after several days of no classes.
The teachers union voted last week for a return to remote learning, which sparked a backlash from city leaders, including Mayor Lori Lightfoot who want to see children inside classrooms.
The Cincinnati Public Schools Board of Education voted to go completely remote until 24 January due to staffing concerns, WLWT.com reported. Hundreds of staffers called out last week, the report said. Milwaukee schools are also going remote until 18 January.
Students within the New York City public school system have planned a walkout on Tuesday to demand a remote learning option due to safety concerns inside classrooms. The city has nearly one million children in school and more than a quarter called out at least once last week, according to NY.Chalkbeat.org.
The fight has turned political, with teachers’ unions, in most cases, fighting for remote learning and cities fighting for in-person learning.
“I think that [President] Joe Biden and [Secretary of Education] Miguel Cardona and the newly elected mayor of New York City [Eric Adams] and Lori Lightfoot—they can all declare that schools will be open,” Amy Mizialko, the head of the teachers union in Milwaukee, told The New York Times. “But unless they have hundreds of thousands of people to step in for educators who are sick in this uncontrolled surge, they won’t be.”
On The College Front
According to INSIDE HIGHER ED, data collected by the College Crisis Initiative, or C2i, at Davidson College, show that more than 88 percent of the 502 schools in the research center’s sample are returning to physical classrooms, with almost 12 percent opting for a remote spring semester.
TREND FORECAST: The Trends Journal has reported extensively on lockdowns and the impact they have on school-aged children. (See: “LOCKDOWN MADNESS: CURE WORSE THAN THE DISEASE,” “SCHOOL LOCKDOWNS KILLING STUDENTS,” and “DETROIT SCHOOLS: MAJORITY OF KIDS ABSENT. CLASSES GOING ONLINE.”)
We have pointed out that the lockdowns in 2020 helped speed up the transition to online learning, which is here to stay. (See: “MEGA-TREND OF THE FUTURE: RICE UNIVERSITY TURNS TO ONLINE LEARNING,” “INDIA’S ONLINE-LEARNING AN INVESTMENT WINDFALL, SOLIDIFYING ‘INTERACTIVE U’ FORECAST IN TRENDS JOURNAL.”)
With interactive education, students will be able to access the best and most accomplished experts in selected fields of study rather than the one-size-fits-all, outdated educational programming that is now the norm.
Trends are born, they grow, mature, reach old age, and die. The Industrial Age education model is dying, and the “Interactive U” model Gerald Celente had forecast in his bestselling book, “Trends 2000” (Warner Books, 1997), is still in its infancy.
Thus, the Ontrendpreneur® opportunities that seize upon its growth will provide great rewards.