Um...we don't all have access. In Los Angeles, many people do not have cable and just watch their favorite shows (often in Spanish) on youtube - or they have only that one package (Spanish language TV or Korean language TV)
Many of us have cut the cable.
We've cared for our granddaughters without TV for several years. Neither of them watches TV (their TV's are used mainly for gaming and for family viewing). PBS can be found on Apple TV, but there's very little live broadcasting.
However, that doesn't mean that the US couldn't set up a shared broadcast/streaming educational TV system. Federal government has withdrawn most support, though, so it's mostly donations from people like us.
There are serious issues with the content as well. While PBS is great for little kids, the subjects of middle school and higher (like algebra) are very difficult to broadcast and have the station stay in business. Chemistry, physics, actual US history without costumes, sociology, psychology - all considered "boring" by the regular viewing public. English literature isn't all that popular even at physical universities - and it's hard to teach writing via TV.
Anthropology works pretty well when taught by video and other distance methods (so does Art History). Any highly visual field works. We don't do a lot of number crunching in undergrad anthropology. But students need the kinesthetic part (teacher moving around, drawing on the board, passing things around, etc) to keep their eyes from glazing over.
Here's a sample of a freshman college level stat lecture:
And here's middle school English:
Everything also has to be closed captioned - and one thing that's cool about Youtube is that they can do it automatically plus you can speed it up or slow it down (and even fiddle with the colors if need be).
The thing that really prevents this though, is the requirement that states have. They do not pay teachers for broadcasting their lessons - they only pay when the student shows up. So there has to be some way to ascertain that the student is actually there.
Which brings me to the question many of us are pondering. Do we *require* the student to show their face inside Zoom/Canvas? Or is it enough that there's just their name...in a little text box and they could be out surfing for all I know? Because I know students. And I know they sign in and then just go about their daily life.
Not really okay with me, on a regular day.
I'm getting lots and lots of push back on this issue from students, though. K-12 is likely going to require faces to be seen and for good reason.
But what does a family do with 4 simultaneous learners? Is there enough bandwidth and enough devices (forget computers - hardly any family has 4 laptops IMO). California is distributing 1 million more tablets to students on top of what was already distributed, but as a teacher, I can only imagine the chaos in a house where each kid is supposed to be "in school" (in line of sight - doing/watching stuff) alongside their sibs, the family pets, the baby - and some adult caretaker.
