Date: Solstice +7 2197

Place: University of North Brexit

Keynote Speaker: Dr Stanwix Ledgirschylde, Department of Millennial Studies

Chair: I’m delighted to welcome you here this morning and see that so many have turned out for Dr Ledgirschylde’s fascinating talk on the subject of “millennial learning”. As you know, Dr Ledgirschylde is an expert on cyber archaeology.

Her recent work includes restoring her own great-great grandmother @sezl’s Twitter feed, as well as documenting the history of education and culture in the early 21st century. Over to you, Dr Ledgirschylde (applause).

Speaker: Thank you. My conviction that the implosion of civilisation in what was then known as “The Western World” was triggered by the death of cultural demi-god David Bowie is based on posts on @sezl’s Twitter timeline.

She pinpoints the years between 2016 and 2021 as a period of rapidly increasing turmoil.

This supports the contemporary belief that the death of Bowie and the subsequent death of Prince - not royalty, as early researched supposed, but a popular entertainer - foreshadowed the catastrophe ahead.

Coronavirus: ‘The Great Remoting’

However, today’s talk focuses on @sezl’s particular areas of interest; education and breadmaking and the impact of the coronavirus on both.

The approach to the outbreak of Covid-19 was largely based on folklore and guesswork. The belief that the pandemic could be halted - reversed even - by organising individuals into “bubbles” was widespread.

Research reveals this was a metaphorical term rather than a literal “bubble”; confusion arose (as it so often does in this area of investigation) as internet memes showed images of humans participating in what we now understand to be a niche sporting activity - zorbing.

Those of you familiar with 21st-century customs and manners will be aware of the late-second-age Elizabethans’ fondness for online gags and irony - which goes a long way to explaining how a parody Twitter account that “got out of hand” led to the Donald Trump presidency and subsequent Trumpageddon. However, I digress …

Up until March 2020, conventional teaching and learning took place in classrooms.

A “class” was a group of similarly aged people studying the same subject - not to be confused with social class, although, it has to be said, the two frequently coincided.

During Lockdown One, remote learning - via internet and worksheets - provided a stop gap. Unlike now, it was practically unheard of for children to be implanted with a connectivity app at birth and, consequently, this provision was patchy.

Schools of thought

There are opposing views on school closure in 2020. If you take the “Adonis Stance” as a literal reading, schools were shut and teachers were put on an extended break in receipt of full pay, while children ran lawless and uneducated throughout the land.

It is important to bear in mind that Lord Adonis was not actually a teacher, nor were others who supported his view, although it is easy to be beguiled by his authoritative tone.

Despite rumours from the Adonis camp, schools never closed completely and, judging by accounts from those actually in the teaching profession, the expectation was that considerable lengths were taken to provide education online or in the form of worksheets.

An added complication was that teachers with their own young children were required to teach them at home in addition to their online work.

As @sezl was in the privileged position of having adult children, she revelled in remote learning and appears to have enjoyed the online interaction with her students.

In one telling incident, she explains that her head-of-year job before the pandemic was to oversee the institutional dress code prescribed for students.

A popular opinion among educational experts at the time was that the wearing of identical clothing, once over the threshold of a school building, enhanced students’ learning and maintained order.

Particular focus was given to the length and width of leg coverings known as “trousers”.

As @sezl herself observed in a tweet from mid-2020, “now I don’t have to worry about who is wearing what trousers, I can actually get on with the job of teaching”.

Bread of heaven

Of course, the freedom to teach - in @sezl’s words again - “pure literature” also allowed her time to explore her obsession with bread-making.

Despite the limited supply of grain-based powders known as “flour” and leavening products such as “yeast”, @sezl spent a large portion of her salary sourcing these foodstuffs from artisan suppliers.

Her timeline reveals a proliferation of baked goods at varying stages of the bread-making process.

It appears from her tweets and Facebook posts that @sezl believed that the sequence of mixing, rising, proving and baking tied in with her own sequential - and, to our modern tastes, plodding -  pedagogical outlook, although this may have been an elaborate attempt at humour on her part.

@sezl’s experience is, of course, only a fragment of the story; her eye-witness account, along with those of others on “EduTwitter”, has been most useful in exploring - although not, perhaps, unravelling - the complexities of the pandemic.

Thank you for listening.

Next week, the focus of my talk will be “Harry Potter: Fact or fiction?”, when I will challenge the current academic stance that magic in the late 20th century was routinely taught to children in all secondary schools.

Any questions?

Sarah Ledger has been teaching English for 33 years. She tweets as @sezl