Online Learning During the Pandemic Is Extra Tough Where Wifi Is Illegal
The Mother Jones Podcast
Mother Jones
4.5 • 1.1K Ratings
🗓️ 8 April 2020
⏱️ 27 minutes
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Summary
Schools across the country have closed to slow the spread of COVID-19, and classes have moved online. For most students, disruptions to regular learning have been challenging enough. But for those without high-speed internet, even filing homework has become next-to impossible, resulting in plunging grades and widespread uncertainty. In today’s episode, the Mother Jones Podcast team takes you to a place where wifi is illegal: Green Bank, West Virginia. This small town is home to a super-sensitive radio telescope built in 1958 that scientists use to explore black holes and deep space. But closer to Earth, wifi interferes with the giant instrument, so it’s banned within a 10-square-mile radius. Meanwhile, hard-wired internet is mind-numbingly slow. Fifteen percent of students here don’t have internet access at home, while 30 percent don’t have access to a device that even connects to the internet, no matter where they are. Producer Molly Schwartz talks to students, teachers, and librarians in Pocahontas County about what it’s like to do distance learning in a place where the internet infrastructure just can't deal, revealing the nation's entrenched digital divides as the pandemic shakes the education system to its core.
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| 0:00.0 | Some of us of a certain age remember this sound. |
| 0:07.0 | Doing your homework online during the coronavirus lockdown is hard enough. |
| 0:13.2 | Now, imagine doing it where internet speeds are dialed back to this. |
| 0:18.6 | This is the Mother Jones podcast. I'm Jimmy |
| 0:26.0 | King in Brooklyn. Today we're taking you somewhere totally different to a place called the Valley of the |
| 0:42.3 | telescopes remote education to a place called the Valley of the Telescopes. |
| 0:43.6 | Remote education during the coronavirus is, well, it's a mess. |
| 0:48.8 | Internet bandwidth usage is up about 40% across the country since the COVID-19 outbreak. |
| 0:54.8 | But imagine on top of all the normal bad stuff |
| 0:58.4 | you have to bear as a teenager, |
| 1:00.1 | unrequited love, chores, nagging parents, you can't even turn in your homework. |
| 1:07.0 | Today, learning from home is hard enough. Try doing it where Wi-Fi is illegal. |
| 1:15.0 | If you've had no trouble downloading and listening to this podcast and remember to subscribe, you are probably |
| 1:26.1 | among the 85% of American adults with access to high-speed internet. Now imagine those times when your internet connection |
| 1:36.0 | slows down like when you're traveling through a tunnel or you're trying to |
| 1:40.1 | stream the Super Bowl at the same time as everyone else. That's what online life is like all the time for the other 15%. |
| 1:50.0 | 15% of students in Pocahontas County, West Virginia have no internet access. |
| 1:57.0 | 30% have no devices that even connect to the internet. |
| 2:02.0 | That's where Molly Schwartz, our associate producer, is taking me today. |
| 2:07.1 | Hey Molly. Hi, Jamila. What made you decide to write this story? |
| 2:12.2 | So a fun fact about me, before coming to Mother Jones, |
| 2:15.2 | I actually worked at a library nonprofit |
... |
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