But what about children in Australia, where remote teaching has been done for many years? Are they all somehow specially gifted children, so that they manage?
I'm assuming you're talking about kids in the Outback, where vast distance makes it harder to have classroom instruction?
There was a recent NYT article about that[0], and my takeaway is that it's really homeschooling with support from teachers. Not a Zoom videoconference where they fake like they're in the same classroom. The parents are much more involved in the early years. Once the kids are old enough to know how to learn, then it can become more of an instruction/homework style of teaching rather than what's required for preschool and Kindergarten kids.
[0] https://www.nytimes.com/2020/04/10/world/australia/australia...
It was 1 way or 2 way radio back in the day, now wiki says it’s 1 way video stream with 2 way voice.
From wiki... “ Each student typically spends one hour per day receiving group or individual lessons from the teacher, and the rest of the day working through the assigned materials with a parent, older sibling or a hired home-stay tutor.”
These children might develop an amazing self-sufficiency or some advanced self-organization skills (if they manage to deal with it well). I often wonder how I myself would have turned out, if I had been taught this way or similarly.