Online learning is causing problems within the school system. How do I know this? Because I am in school at Battle Ground High School and I can see the students, including me, failing and falling behind.
This may not be an issue that can be easily fixed, but seeing how students ended last school year by not wanting or ever finishing school and that carrying on into the majority of this school year is damaging everyone. Most people outside of school can’t see this, but being a student thrown into this “temporary” situation was not a good substitute for actual school.
In-class learning is much more helpful in all grades from preschool to high school. Being in the young grades, teachers can’t count on parents or tutors to fully help a child learn to do the simple, yet most important things, like reading or spelling. Yes, it can be taught, but it’s a struggle for parents having to see their kids not actually gaining anything from the online side of it all.
For high schoolers, like myself, we have started to initially give up. As I said earlier, at the end of last year, students’ grades dropped almost instantly just because we didn’t feel the need to do any school, especially after sitting in front of a computer for hours, having to pretty much teach ourselves and waste our day. And yes, this does all come down to the personal motivation of that student, but seeing their peers and friends also unmotivated puts a thought in one’s mind that it’s OK to slack off if everyone else is doing it. In case you haven’t noticed, that’s sort of the culture of this generation. Peer pressure, it’s everywhere.
I’m not pointing fingers at anyone, but the government has a lot to do with this. It makes me wonder why such intelligent politicians seem to not care that this generation, whom everyone says “will help fix the country’s problems,” is losing hope in education and not wanting to go further in it. Especially if this is how the future education system will have to stay.
Yes, the schools are opening, yay. But, it’s already very late in the school year and numerous students are failing and will not be able to graduate all because of the earlier school learning all being online. Being in school has helped many, like me. It’s starting to make many realize, “oh shoot, this is it. I don’t want to go through this again. I need to finish.” But now that’s all it is: I “need to graduate.” It hardly seems many are thinking, “I want to graduate,” or “I want to go learn more in college.” This is just what I’ve seen first-hand from students like myself. I know the concern for this isn’t new, but it is something that needs to be fixed for good sooner rather than later.
We can’t keep going like this for any longer than we have to.
