Something is Wrong with Online School.

Just over a year ago, the world changed. Social beings, used to human interaction every day of the week, are now confined to their small rooms and apartments. Our daily commutes to work and school were dreaded, and we wanted an escape. We got way more than we bargained for. Over one weekend in January, our daily lives came to a standstill. Gone in the blink of an eye, torn apart by the coronavirus. But like always, we adapted. Our bedrooms turned into offices, and our coworkers turned into tiny boxes. We scrambled to catch up to the circumstance and found a way to work through it. However, all was not the same. Learning online is drastically different from learning in person. Something about it just doesn’t fit. The problem is personality. Personality is gone from teaching, and the world is suffering for it.

The Stinky Slideshow.

The days of in-person classes seem so far away, but let’s think back to them. How did we get taught? By a teacher, with supplementary resources like slideshows being backgrounds. The teacher was the source of the learning, not the screen. However, this is no longer true. Before, the PowerPoint was a background. Something to look at when you needed reprieve from looking at the proper instruction, the teacher. This got lost with online learning. The presentation dominates the screen, drowning out everything else. It ends up like trying to have a phone call when you are going through a tunnel; The signal just doesn’t get through. We are getting taught by Keynote slides, not teachers.

The Collapse of Creativity.

We go to school to become better people, learning from others and applying knowledge to improve ourselves. School is a place of personal development. We go to expand our horizons, test unknown waters, and think outside the box. Online school is void of personal growth. Our teachers, which are usually endless sources of wisdom and wells of knowledge, are now smaller than the slideshow. The slideshow. just words. No nuance, no greater understanding. The most important part of learning, the teachers, have been left by the wayside.

The Management Mindset.

Remember when you would walk into chemistry class to learn about buffers but then leave with an understanding of how fire works? Or when you went into Physics to learn about vectors but left knowing how gravity affects airplanes? Back when lesson plans were recommendations and not laws? In-person learning was about growth, and online learning is about passing the unit test. Now during online lessons, the lesson plan is like the gospel. No healthy distractions, no additional knowledge, just reading down the page. The best part about going to school gone in a snap. We go to school to enhance our understanding of the world, and for that, a strict lesson plan doesn’t cut it.

The Unhappy Ending.

School is not the same in the COVID era. We are getting taught like robots, not humans. School has lost its color, which we so desperately need. The virus has run rampant through society physically and mentally, leaving scars everywhere. Because of the virus, school has lost its shine. No global problem like this has an easy fix either. The virus is making school depressing. Online learning has significant issues, and we need to stop ignoring them and work on fixing them.