I wanted to browse some news in a free moment but it turns out there’s yet another round of Elon drama, so it’s impossible to weed through the madness to get to actual news.

On the positive side, I’m taking a really great course on conservatism vs leftism in my Ukrainian philosophy school. Nobody there has any politically correct speech constraints, it’s an absolute joy. Experiencing how free people can be in thinking and speaking is magical.

At this point, all of my colleagues except one (who has a reason to want to live far away) have agreed that remote teaching has been an unqualified disaster for foreign languages. Students simply didn’t learn enough to pass to the next stage. Most of the learning in language courses happens through small group conversation practice in class, and there’s no way to make that happen on Zoom.

At least, people are not denying it now that it’s become obvious.

Students figured it out earlier, and in-person enrollments have been unusually high while Zoom enrollments are in the toilet.