Opening up in-person education during the coronavirus pandemic is considered a high-risk. An alternative is called remote learning. A more accurate label would be remote teaching; whether or not learning occurs is yet to be determined.

Recent experience with remote teaching has demonstrated the need for teachers to elaborate upon the lessons, provide a personal touch while covering essentially the same content that would be included during in-school classroom instruction. Coverage of as much of this information as time will allow is a shared mission of both in-school and remote instruction. Parents now see more clearly what that entails.

In-school instructors teach a compartmentalized curriculum, offered in short time slots within a departmental organization, where students are largely dependent upon teachers for acquiring information and organizing their activities.

In contrast, during remote instruction students are left on their own to comprehend that information, organize their own time, maintain motivation and focus their attention.

Being dependent upon the teacher and a Common Core curriculum, most students report finding themselves lacking self-direction. They may have limited help from adults in the home, but their engagement is often restricted by other matters of survival.

Determining what and how much has been learned in either setting is dependent upon applying a validated concept of what constitutes learning and applying a strategy for assessing learning outcomes that is consistent with the nature of learning.

Neither conventional in-person education nor remote instruction, as presently practiced, is likely to address the shortcomings noted in the recent National Report Card, as long as coverage of isolated bits and pieces of subject matter takes precedence over in-depth understandings, or as long as students think learning requires just reading the text, attending class and passing a test.

Robert Gagne spent his entire career attempting to define learning in the cognitive domain. Compare his model to the levels of learning that happen in education during in-person and remote instruction.

Gagne found that all learning begins with experiences, a stimulus from which more sophisticated levels of learning accumulate. He found 10 simple to complex levels: a stimulus with an automatic response, simple associations, motor chaining, verbal chaining, multiple discrimination, concept formation, simple rules, principles, laws and problem-solving skills.

A stimulus that is picked up by our senses is relayed to the brain and mind, where it is processed in ways consistent with attitudes, values, beliefs and personal orientations with life, unique to each individual.

Repeated stimuli (experiences) result in simple associations, the beginning recognition of simple relationships. These associations are responded to with physical or motor responses, non-verbal language. Later these associations are represented in verbal language, first composed mainly of signs that denote or point to the objects and processes related to associations.

When similar experiences are repeated with engagement in a variety of situations and perspectives, multiple discrimination occurs that leads to concept formation. Concepts are mental images that contain multiple dimensions that are retained or conserved in the mind and applied when attempting to understand and describe experiences and the relationships between sets of ideas.

While associations are represented with language composed of signs that denote specific meanings, concepts connote a variety of meanings and symbols convey those meanings.

Consistencies found in the application of concepts lead to simple rules that eventually are formed into principles. Consistent applications of principles lead to the formulation of laws that feature maximized reliability. Laws result in effective problem solving.

This process of learning applied to any subject, ranging from an initial stimulus to problem solving, occurs within each learner and must be experienced to its fullest development to achieve maximized levels of insight that can result in effective problem solving and positive mental health.

Learning aborted midway within the developmental sequence outlined above — offered in departmental instructional settings, whether in school or by remote instruction — leaves many learners with diminished competency and a diminished sense of self-worth.

Standardized tests measure recall of items of instruction that seldom reach above the level of verbal expression of simple associations, well below the level of concept formation and below the formulation of principles, laws and problem-solving skills.

The teacher in the classroom can offer comfort to the student and provide information that will provide help for passing a standardized test, but during remote instruction that student suffers from over-dependency on the teacher, who is at a remote location, coupled with a lack of self-direction for one’s own learning.

Gaining in-depth understanding, which includes self-understanding, requires sustained, developmentally appropriate learning experiences that address all the levels of learning and that meet the cognitive objectives identified by Bloom, et al.

The first levels in Bloom’s taxonomy of cognitive objectives deals first with knowledge of facts, their translation, interpretation, extrapolation (comprehension) and application, activities of the typical school. Seldom, if ever, is there higher-order thinking that includes analysis, synthesis and critical/creative evaluation.

Preparing for an unknown future, education must facilitate the acquisition of the creative methods of the disciplines within the general education program if students are to learn how to learn, prepared to pursue learning under any circumstance.

We must do better if long-range survival is important. Time is of the essence to consider the obvious needs for systemic reforms in education based on reputable theories and research.

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Robert L. Arnold lives in Willsboro and is a professor emeritus of education at SUNY Plattsburgh.