Online Learning & Basic Education Students - a compassionate approach

There is a wonderful TED Talk by Bryan Stevenson, "We need to talk about an injustice." He represents people on death row, and in this talk, he speaks about the seemingly magic power of a judge to change a child defendant into something he's not - an adult. 

He ends his talk with the thought that "we cannot be full evolved human beings until we care about human rights and basic dignity. That all of our survival is tied to the survival of everyone. That our visions of technology and design and entertainment and creativity have to be married with visions of humanity, compassion and justice."  

So when we start to connect the dots, the vision for adult basic learners from a systemic point of view needs to be one married to human rights and justice.  How often is the word "compassion" used with curriculum development for the disenfranchised learner, the learner for whom the skills and concepts of the educational system need to be explicitly taught - not assumed.  

How often is a students' humanity recognized, when they are marginalized and streamed into the same square hole as their mainstreamed peers.  Systems and institutions sometimes seem to think that they can magically change learners from low-self-efficacy to one of privilege just by standardizing online platforms, providing online classes, and maintaining the status quo that works for the learner operating at a higher literacy level. 

The systemic and administrative myths of the online platform need to be dispelled in order to provide programming that is rooted in the paradigms of justice and dignity.