No, remote learning is not a problem at all. Bad teachers and bad schools that fail miserably to implement remote learning properly are the problem.
All private schools around me (Czechia, EU) offer excellent remote learning experience, it's actually much better than daily school attendance. Many schools wanted to implement it years ago but it wasn't possible to run a school without daily attendance before the pandemic due to communism-era views and laws.
Public schools - well it's exactly as bad as you would expect something ran by a government to be. Public schools have been causing mental health crisis since their beginning, and it's way worse (it took me 10 years to get out of my own public school-caused depression).
EDIT: Downvoters, please feel free to explain yourself in a comment.
How long are the school days? How are the kids encouraged to get up and move around and also to connect with their peers?
My brother and his wife are teachers at a private school in the UK and they say the kids are struggling there. 8.30 to 4pm is a long day for a child to sit in front of a screen, without much freedom. Also a lot of what is fun about school for younger kids isn't the learning or even the activities, but the doing things together and figuring out things as a group - which is possible remotely but much harder. Esp for the under 10s.
I don't know of a private school around here that has school days with defined length. Children are learning asynchronously from various physical and digital learning materials, collaborating together on projects, and having private consultations or small group lectures based on their requests. Yes, the children are actually eager to learn stuff there!
> 8.30 to 4pm is a long day for a child to sit in front of a screen, without much freedom.
Not a single private school here is forcing children to do that, they have to care about children happiness and success - their profit depends on it.
All public schools here do that, and don't even allow children to have a pause for lunch (yes, really - e.g. both my sister and brother are forced to sit in front of a screen from 8 AM to 3:30 PM [7 AM to 4:30 PM 2 days of the week] with only 5 minute breaks each hour). It's extremely wrong, I agree. Sadly, not forcing your children to be present as the school requests is a crime.
> a lot of what is fun about school for younger kids isn't the learning or even the activities, but the doing things together and figuring out things as a group
Yes, absolutely! The private schools around here are frequently taking the children outside, on various field trips or excursions, and the children can meet at the school in a safe way (small groups, etc) to do projects and play together.
I still haven't found a public school doing anything resembling that now. And pre-pandemic public schools were about sitting quietly without movement and writing down whatever the teacher writes on the whiteboard, and about guessing answers to frequent stressful tests - basically nothing has changed nowadays, only the parents have now noticed how miserable the children are.
I'm frankly worried about how the whole Zoomification of education will affect this budding generation. The only thing Zooming can emulate is the lecture experience. Everything else, joking, teasing, playing, running, flirting, passing notes...the quintessential 'kid' experience is lost. Why? Because of a virus that doesn't kill kids. Vaccinate the teachers and get back to how things were.
It does kill/severely impact a lot of adults with whom kids interact, however. My decision to keep my child at home even if schools reopen is based as much on the risk to other members of our family as it is on the risk to her.
And even if it doesn’t kill them, we don’t yet know what long term effects the virus may have on children who contract it.
> And even if it doesn’t kill them, we don’t yet know what long term effects the virus may have on children who contract it.
We will never know that. 10 years from now, people could still be saying "there might be some terrible thing lurking that just hasn't shown up yet!" We're well over a year out from when some of the first infected children recovered, it's time to start ratcheting some of our ideas of this unknown risk down. Also, we have no better idea what long term effects the vaccines may have, but everyone is champing at the bit to assume that risk.
The harms of social isolation and screen learning, on the other hand, are well understood and being inflicted on great masses of children, far more than will ever have a serious symptomatic case of Covid.
Just because you are ignoring the mounting evidence which is being reported (including in TFA) of the harms that school closures and distancing are causing, does not mean that the harm is not there.
If I may be so bold, this is in fact one of the very reasons why my team and I have created sharetheboard.com
I have lots of kids and some of them have been forced to spend much more time in front of screens, as schooling has gone fully remote. The problem is that these lessons often take the form of staring at some presentation or someone's screen... broken up only slightly by a myriad of small faces or icons.
Our goal was to help make the remote learning experience a bit more natural: allowing educators to use intuitive, analog tools such as whiteboards and blackboards and, in doing so, keep eye contact with their students. Kids behave (and, I reckon, learn) differently, in this user experience. There's something familiar about seeing your teacher at the "head" of the class, expounding ideas on a board and looking right back at you as she address your question.
I have multiple educators in my family and they've provided great feedback from using the tool. I myself use it for visual collaboration with remote colleagues.
So, I guess, my point is: remote learning is here to stay, in one form or another. But there is a lot we can do to help make it more comfortable, natural, and effective.
So you don't think the problem is social or psychological or related to sitting alone in one room all day, just like... zoom could have a better interface?
Maybe that question is enough, but I don't have anything else to say that's not incredibly rude.
No, this is a complex problem, requiring a complex solution. One of the problem's key themes, however, is a dehumanization of previously very human-rich interactions. Anything that brings back a dose of that humanity is a step in the right direction. Certainly not a cure-all, just a small contribution.
18 comments
[ 3.5 ms ] story [ 63.7 ms ] threadAll private schools around me (Czechia, EU) offer excellent remote learning experience, it's actually much better than daily school attendance. Many schools wanted to implement it years ago but it wasn't possible to run a school without daily attendance before the pandemic due to communism-era views and laws.
Public schools - well it's exactly as bad as you would expect something ran by a government to be. Public schools have been causing mental health crisis since their beginning, and it's way worse (it took me 10 years to get out of my own public school-caused depression).
EDIT: Downvoters, please feel free to explain yourself in a comment.
My brother and his wife are teachers at a private school in the UK and they say the kids are struggling there. 8.30 to 4pm is a long day for a child to sit in front of a screen, without much freedom. Also a lot of what is fun about school for younger kids isn't the learning or even the activities, but the doing things together and figuring out things as a group - which is possible remotely but much harder. Esp for the under 10s.
I don't know of a private school around here that has school days with defined length. Children are learning asynchronously from various physical and digital learning materials, collaborating together on projects, and having private consultations or small group lectures based on their requests. Yes, the children are actually eager to learn stuff there!
> 8.30 to 4pm is a long day for a child to sit in front of a screen, without much freedom.
Not a single private school here is forcing children to do that, they have to care about children happiness and success - their profit depends on it.
All public schools here do that, and don't even allow children to have a pause for lunch (yes, really - e.g. both my sister and brother are forced to sit in front of a screen from 8 AM to 3:30 PM [7 AM to 4:30 PM 2 days of the week] with only 5 minute breaks each hour). It's extremely wrong, I agree. Sadly, not forcing your children to be present as the school requests is a crime.
> a lot of what is fun about school for younger kids isn't the learning or even the activities, but the doing things together and figuring out things as a group
Yes, absolutely! The private schools around here are frequently taking the children outside, on various field trips or excursions, and the children can meet at the school in a safe way (small groups, etc) to do projects and play together.
I still haven't found a public school doing anything resembling that now. And pre-pandemic public schools were about sitting quietly without movement and writing down whatever the teacher writes on the whiteboard, and about guessing answers to frequent stressful tests - basically nothing has changed nowadays, only the parents have now noticed how miserable the children are.
It does kill/severely impact a lot of adults with whom kids interact, however. My decision to keep my child at home even if schools reopen is based as much on the risk to other members of our family as it is on the risk to her.
And even if it doesn’t kill them, we don’t yet know what long term effects the virus may have on children who contract it.
We will never know that. 10 years from now, people could still be saying "there might be some terrible thing lurking that just hasn't shown up yet!" We're well over a year out from when some of the first infected children recovered, it's time to start ratcheting some of our ideas of this unknown risk down. Also, we have no better idea what long term effects the vaccines may have, but everyone is champing at the bit to assume that risk.
The harms of social isolation and screen learning, on the other hand, are well understood and being inflicted on great masses of children, far more than will ever have a serious symptomatic case of Covid.
I don't think this is true. I don't think we know how this generation will be affected by Zoom 8-4 every day.
I have lots of kids and some of them have been forced to spend much more time in front of screens, as schooling has gone fully remote. The problem is that these lessons often take the form of staring at some presentation or someone's screen... broken up only slightly by a myriad of small faces or icons.
Our goal was to help make the remote learning experience a bit more natural: allowing educators to use intuitive, analog tools such as whiteboards and blackboards and, in doing so, keep eye contact with their students. Kids behave (and, I reckon, learn) differently, in this user experience. There's something familiar about seeing your teacher at the "head" of the class, expounding ideas on a board and looking right back at you as she address your question.
I have multiple educators in my family and they've provided great feedback from using the tool. I myself use it for visual collaboration with remote colleagues.
So, I guess, my point is: remote learning is here to stay, in one form or another. But there is a lot we can do to help make it more comfortable, natural, and effective.
Maybe that question is enough, but I don't have anything else to say that's not incredibly rude.