Systemic shock: how Covid-19 exposes our learning challenges in education

Abstract

In this brief engagement, in which I draw on both my own work and the work of several commentators and scholars on the state of our contemporary condition, I ask what the shock of Covid-19 might mean for our ability to think of education and, particularly, for the task of learning in deeper and more inclusive ways. I begin with the argument that systems of education have as their main purpose the achievement of educative learning, and that the focus of this aim is the individual learner. In reflecting critically on how systems manage this objective, I look at how systems deal with issues of difference - what they seek to institute and protect, what they struggle with - and suggest that they have difficulty in holding the individual learner in view and in their practice. In closing, I explore the question of what new possibilities or insights the shock of Covid-19 might open for a system and how such a system might operate.