Distance teaching and teaching ‘as’ distance. A critical reading of online teaching instruments during and after the pandemic

Abstract

This paper intends to read through a critical lens the digitalization of schooling caused by the COVID-19 epidemic. The emergency has forced European governments to close the schools and consequently, all the schooling activities have been transferred online. Referring to some works of Giorgio Agamben, Paul Virilio and Walter Benjamin the authors propose some critical remarks on the transformation of schooling space and schooling time that characterizes the practice of distance learning. This transformation pertains not only to accidental aspects of schooling but affects the very identity of the schooling experience. In a completely digitalized school, time is characterized by instantaneousness: time as duration is replaced by the “time of exposure”, as stated by Paul Virilio. In addition, the school completely dematerialized, is reduced to the two-dimensional space of the screen. The article aims to show that instantaneous time and dematerialized space make the experience of “crossing” difficult. Therefore, following some remarks by Jan Masschelein and Gert Biesta, it is maintained that the experience of “crossing” endangered by the digitalization of schooling is essential to an authentic experience of schooling. It is not intended to refuse the digital innovations as such but to “put them on the table”, in order to suspend their immediate use and analyze them critically.