The Internet Schooling Pandemic

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I sat in my kitchen last week having a "lesson" with my one student who stayed on during the pandemic.  He has two teen age sons so his experience is a bit different from mine.  His kids are on some form of internet application in school for at least 4 hours a day. Then they are finished and they "retire" to their rooms and continue on their own.  My student seemed to think that this type of school would be the school of the future.

ugh. agh.  I shudder to think.

If you didnt notice I was being ironic saying that I had my lesson with him over skype then I "agh" school on the internet.  This is not lost on me.  But I still would hate to think that this type of school would be the future.

Why?

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Well my kids are a bit younger, in sixth and 3rd grade and my experience with them with internet schooling is quite different.  First of all, I hope you have been reading my pandemic posts (well geez, there was lockdown, what else have you got to do?) because all of them had some comment, usually negative about my kids with internet schooling.

First and mainly, this just seems to me another example of transferring more work to parents from the source.  You know, like on line banking?  Before you handed the form to the cashier and they did all the money transferring and sending it to the parties to do whatever.  Now we do all the work on online banking. It takes us more time.  Otherwise we get charged in the bank.
The loss of a travel agent and booking ourselves is the same thing. No matter how many times you have done it and don't mind doing it, it is still a task of several hours that we didn't do before.

I can tell you both my wife and I have put a lot more time into our kids with their schooling during the pandemic time.  Now you may say, "great" more time with the kids and with important things like schooling.  uh, no.  Because much of the time was not spent with tutoring them.  Helping them with school I did not mind and liked.  But the other thing we had to do was watch them and make sure they were  paying attention and doing the work.  This was work  either the teacher would do or would not have to be done.  Really my kids are NOT bad students but at home I had to yell at them quite often to get off the video games and pay attention to the class or save the video games till after 3pm.  In school my daughter would NOT start playing a video game at any instance in school.  She knows better than that. But at home..... .  She can turn the school class camera off and even the microphone off and just pay attention when she is called on, otherwise she might be playing a video game on her phone.  Royal pain.

And several times a day: "did you do your math homework?  You want me to help you with something?  Can you show me that you sent the work in?"   In physical school the teacher says, "ok, hand in your assignment", and the kids do. If it 's not done, they have some sort of penalty and besides they usually really feel bad for not doing the assignment.  Not so with school from home. 

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From the likes of it, I don't think I am the only one who was dissatisfied with internet schooling by far.  Even my student who said his kids were fine with the school at home told me later that his wife was staying at home every day (she also worked at his company) because she had much more work with their kids and their schooling AND preparing more meals at home, which we also had to do.

The national at home dads network (NAHDN) in the U.S. has a video out that gives you pointers with helping your kids with schooling while they are at home.  There are probably other resources or DVDs on home schooling current and from the recent past.

Now I won't deny that there are some advantages and some room for internet schooling in the future,

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like one day or half a day or something, but I put my foot down and object if it were to be more than 2 days.  Especially for basic school 1 through 5. I don't believe that it can work well.

My wife was so put off by our daughters not learning well enough that she will be taking some longer time off from work in the near future to make sure they stay up with their school work.  Basically she will spend more time supervising them.  I can't decide if this is good or bad.

And for those kids whose parents both have a job. or I shudder to think about single parents,  who have limited free time with their kids, usually families of lower income, it will just be another dividing mechanism between rich and poor.  Not to mention the technology equipment that has to be purchased.  It isnt so easy for EVERYONE to put up the money. 

And of course just more tech stress.  My older sister is a professor and her university was closed, but she did internet teaching and she mentioned just the extra time she had to spend dealing with the tech aspect of teaching was such a pain and probably very time consuming especially at first.  Granted once you do it for a year you can iron out the problems, but it is just another 10 to 50 hours you are going to have to spend to learn something which probably has nothing to do with teaching. But now in these days it has to be learned.  For those who just want to teach but aren't good with tech, it will just mean more tech stress which... isn't fun. Let's put it another way.  What if you had to learn the piano or violin to teach kids.  Many teachers do know how to play and incorporate it in their teaching, but not all.   But if you HAD to and you weren't musically inclined wouldn't it just stress you out and make you angry? Maybe it was your dream to teach, but you can't play an instrument which you must, so you can¨t teach.  Does this make sense?

I had a parents meeting on the internet with the teachers of my older daughter.  School MIGHT open up on June first.  But nobody knows.  Maybe there will be a combination of school at school and at home.  OK.  My wife and I and even my daughter ALL want her to go back to school.  The teachers said, yes, one day in school and 4 at home.  One day? 

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo

Pandemic be gone.
Internet schooling be gone too.  Shoo .