January 8, 2021 - 9:37am
When it comes to lockdowns, third time isn’t the charm; statistics around digital poverty are bleaker than ever. Ofcom estimates that over 1.8 million children do not have access to a laptop, desktop or tablet, and 800,000 pupils live in homes with only a mobile internet connection.
The government has failed to deliver on its pledge to provide laptops to the most disadvantaged pupils; by August only 37% of pupils eligible had been able to access a device. Only 51 per cent of households earning between £6,000 and £10,000 have access to the internet at all.
At least during the first lockdown, the government had the excuse that the situation was genuinely unprecedented, and could claim that teething problems were inevitable. 10 months on, and the government has no such defence.
So where is the contingency plan? Individuals, organisations and campaigns such as Devices Dot Now are making valiant efforts, but there is still a shocking lack of leadership and ignorance around the scale of the problem.
Today, it was reported that Education Secretary Gavin Williamson turned down an offer to get free or cheap broadband for thousands of disadvantaged families. Instead, his solution to the problem was telling parents to report schools to Ofsted if they felt that the online provision was not good enough. Teachers are only just recovering from the whiplash of several u-turns around mass testing and exams, and it is an odd state of affairs when Ofsted can inspect schools’ remote lessons, but the government isn’t willing to invest in the infrastructure needed to make remote lessons work in the first place.
There are 1.4 million children on free school meals in the UK; the government could buy every single one of them a £400 Chromebook and 12 months of £20-a-month broadband for roughly the same amount of money (£896m) as the Eat Out To Help Out Scheme (£849m).
In fact, they could buy every single pupil in the UK a decent £500 laptop and 12 months of broadband for £6.5 billion, which is less than a third of the price of our ‘world-beating’ test and trace system.
It’s therefore not so much a question of can’t, but won’t.
The digital divide is not a new phenomenon, but the result of a decade of unambitious government policies. Lack of investment in broadband infrastructure means that the UK’s fibre-optic connectivity is around 8-10%, in contrast with South Korea’s 98%. Guidance around technology-supported learning is incredibly vague: the Core Content Framework for Initial Teacher Training makes no reference to it at all.
The government’s short-term solution is to label children without access to technology as “vulnerable,” and therefore allow them to go to school alongside the children of key workers. However, this has been poorly publicised, and more needs to be done to be make sure kids actually show up — in June only about 20% of vulnerable children went into school.
It seems mind-boggling that only 14 months ago, Jeremy Corbyn’s plan to bring free broadband to everyone was mocked by the BBC as ‘broadband communism.’ Boris Johnson called it a “crackpot scheme”, Nicky Morgan laughed at this “reckless fantasy” and even Jess Philips said it “was just not believable.” It seems no-one is laughing now.
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Subscribe“Inclusive language” is an anglocentric hustle. I was recently asked on a scientific grant application to write my CV in a “gender-neutral” way. Trouble is, my surname is Ó Náraigh, which is the male form of the surname. The female version would be Uí Náraigh or Ní Náraigh, depending on the context. So not gender-neutral at all. You would wonder how the Russians manage (“Vladimirov / Vladimirova”). There must be many other languages where such “gender-blinding” is not possible, leading me to believe that “woke” is a mind-virus that specifically affects the English-speaking brain.
Not to mention having to write everything gender neutral in french.
lunac.y.i.e !!
Of course Google should issue intersectional guidance as well so that if you register as black you will be able to use such expressions as “N****r” as a friendly greeting and “B***h” for your girlfriend without being deleted.
My wife used to drive our 13 year old son to school together with a friend’s 5 year old daughter and was constantly turning the radio off when songs by Rappers were played – which my son much enjoyed – for fear of the friends daughter coming out with such words at embarrassing moments. For some reason a startling level of sexism seemed (at least then) to be acceptable if the singer was black. It was all very difficult for her to explain the problem that didn’t seem to make much sense to my son.
This is yet more woke capitalism. Rents are at an all-time high across the industrialized world. Home ownership is in long-term decline. Having trouble with your landlord? That’s okay. Google is here to the rescue – the solution is to give him a more gender-neutral name. Problem solved, let’s move on… to children’s entertainment. Disney wants to take over parents’ duties, and teach children about race, sex, gender, and identity. The kids’ college fund is a bit depleted. If Disney is so good at parenting, will it stump up the cash?
Come to think of it, what , if anything, has been proposed as a gender-neutral version of “landlord”?
Will it be like the acting profession, where it’s apparently politically correct to call all by the male term “actor”? Or the confusion of chairman / chairwoman / chairperson / chair? The only one of those that is disappearing fast is “chairwoman”.
But, if “ever-mutating woke language shibboleths serve to signal class status” they won’t if everyone has access to this technology, as Google seems to intend. Ironically enough, the main purpose of “inclusive language” is to divide people. The new snobs will have to find new markers.
I give it a year, at most.
When I read about ‘Baby G’ and her ‘bimbofication’ I honestly thought that this must be satire. Is this real?
I noticed that my comments are being edited even before I write them down. I wonder how that happened. Oh, maybe I’ve already been influence not to write certain things. Google is late to the game!
True. In composing a post here I always have to bear in mind the quirks of the moderator’s algorithm to try to avoid giving it a hissy fit. I am getting better at knowing what will get it ruffled.
A number of posters who I enjoyed no longer post here presumably because they were less inclined to tailor their posts to meet the moderators predilections. Of course a time may come when rephrasing my thoughts is insufficient and I have to leave the only forum I bother to post on.
This is of course just the beginning. “AI” can and will be extended to more intrusive “auto-corrections” on what you write. This is not necessarily a problem for the individual – you should be able to find and set software that controls such intrusions. Where it will become a problem is when it is used by the publishing media to edit contributions, with or without, the author’s consent. It is inevitable, so railing against it will achieve nothing but journalists and readers voting with their feet might. Integrity lies with the participants.
My pronouns are notfuc/kingwoke, and I think it’s ok for mankind to mention but not to use the word “ni55er”.
Grammarly does not care for the word homosexual.
If you include the short form of that in your post here your post will likely be moderated automatically. What does Grammarly recommend?
Don’t worry… Elon is taking them head on. Gosh, Apple corrected my elon to Elon! Things are looking up!
One presumes this inclusive language AI will be writing in characters developed by the Romans.
Ropeople, please!
Yes, it is utterly absurd that the term ‘nazi’ cannot be used, even to describe the German government of 1933-45! Either this shows very bad faith on the part of UnHerd, or that algorithms just cannot get context at all. Either way, it is censorious and appalling.
Apart from the patronising and hysterically un-self aware notion of anglophone (white) twenty somethings telling the rest of the world how to think about ‘gender’, and indeed, everything, Google is any case the archetypal the classic ‘punching down’ organisation. While endlessly hectoring and cajoling the ‘unwoke’ working class, it bows down and does whatever the governments of the world tell it do, or face being blocked, as in China.
Softwear package…