The fake online vs in-person culture war

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If there’s one thing we’ve learnt over the past few years, it’s that the media and politicians love a fake culture war. There are several reasons for this: distraction (“Hey, why were you partying when we were all observing lockdown?” “Don’t worry about that, what about trans women using ladies loos eh?”); diverting blame (“Why is the NHS so underfunded?” “It’s all those greedy doctors”); making people feel superior sells (“Young people can’t afford houses” “Young people don’t work hard and save like you did”).

No group is safe from a culture war it seems: migrants, women, POC, young people, LGBT people, poor people, liberals, etc. So, it’s no surprise I guess that ‘being online’ would get caught in the net. For those of us in ed tech this comes in two guises: home working and online/hybrid education.

We’ve seen that after being the means that effectively saved education during the online pivot, it has now become the enemy. It’s strange the way this narrative repeats – front line workers were all praised during the pandemic, but are now often pilloried for being greedy (train workers, nurses) or lazy (teachers). That gratitude, respecting everyone attitude sure didn’t last long did it? So, having worked hard to help education keep on track, many educational technologists found themselves rewarded with a ruffle of the hair and a “thanks, now it’s time for the adults to take over” response. HEIs, educators and educational technologists were derided for not running back to the campus quickly enough. And in general any online learning was deemed to be inferior now that we’re back to the real thing.

This is also being played out in most sectors with regards to virtual or hybrid working. Unsurprisingly, Victorian turd monitor, Jacob Rees-Mogg, declared that civil servants must all return to the office full time (the mistrust that they were actually working otherwise was a special thank-you for all their hard work during the pandemic). Even Elon Musk, the tech-bro’s Gordon Ramsey, demanded that Tesla staff return to the office or ‘pretend to work somewhere else” (he really is the asshole’s asshole).

The message is clear – online is pretend, in-person is real. Of course, it’s a false dichotomy, aimed at provoking the reactions I mentioned at the outset. But nevertheless, it is a narrative that is easy (see this more innocent Transport for Wales ad for a version of it). And simple narratives are powerful for many people, so even if everyone involved knows that it’s nonsense, you can still end up spending a lot of your time refuting it (for example, responding to monitoring about face to face time, or writing pointless blog posts).

I don’t have anything profound to say here, but the combination of online learning and online working (whether wholly or hybrid) is likely to give this culture war momentum. And for those of us in ed tech, it’s a storm we will be at the centre of, so be prepared to have rational, well thought arguments to counter it. And then for those to be completely ignored.

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