Education and work are not for everyone: digitalisation and a pandemic divide society

The emergence of new coronavirus variants inevitably leads to the resumption of restrictions, one of which is the transfer of teaching to a distance format. The regularity of pandemics has spurred digitalisation, which is firmly entrenched in education, employment and many other spheres of society.

Today it is not possible to replace online teaching with face-to-face and the performance of labour functions in compliance with all anti-epidemiological norms. Therefore, despite all the indignations of those dissatisfied with the "distancing", all of society is faced with a tough choice: to study and work "full-time", but to be at the risk of disease, or to protect oneself and others from the possibility of infection, not personally being present at work or at an educational institution.

There are no absolute predictions that the next strain will not be fatal for the majority of the population, as well as calculations about its safe course. However, for the preservation of society, and even the human population, it is better to be safe than sorry otherwise neglecting the virus can become a "feast during the plague", when following one's own desires will lead to extinction.

Let's give an example: at the beginning of the 20th century, about 10% of patients died from polio, and 40% became disabled. In the Soviet Union, the first epidemics began in 1949 in the Baltic states, Kazakhstan, and Siberia. The disease annually claimed about 12,000 lives. The disease was defeated by vaccination. However, some countries, having decided that the threat had passed, decided to abandon vaccination, including Tajikistan and some African countries.

As a result, in 1996, polio caused paralysis in 75,000 children in Africa, while the cases were in all countries of the continent without exception. According to expert estimates, subsequent vaccination prevented about 1.8 million cases of the disease. The same thing happened in Tajikistan in 2010.

Having accepted the process of distancing in work and study as an inevitability, it is necessary to determine the consequences that it carries. Two areas were affected: education and employment.

With the introduction of distance learning in education, a number of problems have emerged:

- according to Dmitry Glushko, deputy head of the Ministry of Education of Russia, 700,000 out of 16 million students do not have access to the Internet and computers. According to the all-Russian public organisation "Association of Teachers of Literature and Russian Language", obtained during a survey of about 180,000 people, about one-third does not have personal computers at home.

The same data is given by the Minister of Education and Science of the Altai Territory Maksim Kostenko: out of 110,000 Altai schoolchildren who do not have Internet, about 30,000 of them do not have access to it at all, 80,000 have access, but not stable. Thus, it is possible to confirm the idea that in most regions about 1/3 do not have full access to digital educational services. The figure is significant;

- about 70% of teachers on the periphery are older people who are poorly familiar with information technologies. Therefore, their attempts to conduct lessons in a traditional format through the information space do not bring the same effect that was during face-to-face classes. A concomitant disadvantage: a generation with enormous pedagogical experience is partially withdrawn from the educational process, and it is difficult for them to adopt experience from young people. Continuity is lost;

As a result, students are objectively divided into two main categories: those who have the opportunity to study (remotely and in a mixed regime) and those who are deprived of this opportunity. Taking into account the figures of one third of those who are not provided with educational services, it should be assumed that this is the number of students who will not receive a fully-fledged education.

Conducting an experiment initiated by the government of the Russian Federation on the introduction of a Digital Educational Environment ( DEE) in the regions can lead to a result when children from low-income families will study remotely, and those from well-off ones - in ordinary educational institutions. Let's explain, we are talking about an initiative that involves eliminating small rural schools by attracting children to educational institutions of larger settlements or conducting classes with them remotely.

All disadvantages will pass from secondary education to secondary vocational and higher education. The part of children who have received a fully-fledged education at school may not receive the same at a secondary school or university due to the lack of access to digital education.

The problem is compounded by the promotion of the concept of the "great reset", described by Klaus Schwab and developed in the strategy of the Rockefeller Foundation 2010, which prescribes a four-stage scenario for the transformation of society.

For reference: Klaus Schwab, German economist, founder and permanent president of the World Economic Forum in Davos since 1971, author of the book "The Great Reset".

The strategy mentions a total digital restructuring with the formation of such a two-digit society – a large layer of conglomeration and the rest of humanity, deprived of all the benefits that the first part of civilisation gives.

This is combined with the fact that in the educational process such an important element as comprehension of the information received and critical thinking are forgotten. In Soviet education, since 1941, the formation of mentioned skills was carried out through the compulsory teaching of such a discipline as "logic".

In 1959, under Khrushchev, it was excluded from the list of compulsory disciplines. In part, it remained in the programs of higher educational institutions. As a consequence, there was the presence of critical thinking among those teachers who have passed through the logic course (or who have mastered the skills themselves, which is extremely difficult), and their absence in the remaining part of them.

Unfortunately, one can't teach children what one doesn’t know oneself. And not all parents and teachers have higher education. Therefore, children form clip thinking and lack of a critical approach. With an abundance of information on the World Wide Web that is not verified and often simply false, this will lead to another element of segregation: the division into those who can distinguish truth from lies, and those who are not capable of it.

And it is precisely these processes that we are now observing. Many scientific, grounded thoughts are simply not accepted by society, because they have already been changed. People are already prepared for clip thinking, there is a death of expertise. Persons who put forward judgments that are far from scientific come to the fore. Thus these same flat-earthers, anti-vaccinators, actors and singers appeared who talk about economics, social processes, natural sciences, but do not understand them, or have only a vague idea.

At the end of the day we have a permanent process (continuing from one wave of coronavirus to another one) of segregation among young people.

The impact on education is continued in the field of employment. In the labour market, professions or specialties related to Internet technologies have come to the fore. Let's remember that only those who have access to them can master them, not everyone can.

Those who remained earlier could go to work in less "prestigious" places: cashiers, sellers, ticket inspectors, telephone operators, postmen, etc. However, advancing technologies are replacing people with bots and digital doppelgangers. Jobs are being gradually reduced.

There are still working places in the transport and logistics industry, but drones can "interfere" there, too. Experiments are already being conducted on consulting with machine intelligence on the simplest legal issues and diagnostics, including in healthcare.

The work is gradually becoming elitist, not accessible to everyone. We can still count on the fact that the level of digitalisation has not reached its apogee and that there is a need for workers. However, there is a pitfall here: let's remember how many foreigners work on construction sites, perform communal work, and it is not so easy to "enter" these niches.

To go the other way, expelling migrants and putting young cadres in their places is not so easy: we still need to train them and to oblige the employer to hire them with a decent salary. Statistics help us here: on average, about 31% of university graduates, 43% of colleges and 50% of vocational schools do not work in their specialty. Almost every third one. These are official statistics, unofficial statistics are higher.

By simple calculations, we get: with the initial dropout of one-third of those who did not receive a quality education, we add one-third of those who dropped out due to the inability to find employment. As a result, we get two-thirds of young people who have not received and will not receive what will be available to the remaining third.

The "domino principle" will work here: the mentioned two-thirds will not be able to provide their children with what the representatives of the minority will be able to. Yes, there will be Lomonosovs, but it will be only a handful of people. The majority will be joined by children of "one third" who, for various reasons, will not be able to make their way further.

How to interrupt the segregation process is a very difficult question, depending on many factors, some of which relate to force majeure. However, there are still certain outlines.

First of all, this is the creation of a reasonable combination of mixed and full-time education with a complete ban on switching only to distance education; and also ensuring the staffing and technical equipment of small rural schools, closing them under any pretexts mustn't be possible, even if one person is studying there.

It is possible to use a mixed learning model, when at the same time, the same teacher will conduct classes in person with those who are not sick, and remotely with those who are at home. The only issue here is the technical support of the teacher, and this is quite solvable. Now, because of one sick person, the whole class (group) studies in the distance.

Secondly, the creation of an effective system for transferring experience from the old to the young and vice versa without prejudice to the parties is needed.

Thirdly: there is a need for a return to teaching logic in secondary schools, focusing on learning to verify information from the early age. The restriction of content (or rather its initial drop out) could be a help here on the territory of educational institutions.

Fourthly: employers should be obliged to hire graduates of secondary vocational and higher educational institutions, at least at the beginning, a certain part of them. Along the way, a decrease in the number of migrants working as a "labour force" in highly skilled jobs should be done.

But all this should be done not in stages, but in a complex. There is very little time for a solution. Otherwise, segregation is inevitable. And each of us should understand this.