In Are We Losing a Generation of Children to Remote Learning? author Ginia Bellafante points out how remote learning is negatively affecting children’s attendance.
The principal of P.S 132, an elementary school in Washington Heights, revealed that the attendance rate at her school was 93%. The author found that those students who did return to school in person were behind in all subjects, especially math, english, and reading.
In“The Pandemic Hurt These Students the Most” written by Sarah Mervosh, points out that students of color are more at risk of falling behind in school. Mervosh writes “students who attended schools that were majority Black or Hispanic were six months behind where they normally would have been in math, compared with four months for white students.” This can be attributed to the fact that Black and Hispanic households have less access to technology, were more exposed to Covid-19, and had higher unemployment. RiShawn Biddle, author of “Don’t Kill Remote Learning. Black and Brown Families Need It.” raises attention to the inconsistencies between the number of white individuals who are vaccinated and the number of Black and Hispanic people who are vaccinated. He writes “vaccine hesitant[ion], concerns such as taking time off from work, out-of-pocket costs, and inability to get vaccines are major barriers” are all reasons for this major discrepancy in vaccination numbers.
With all this being said, many families of children are divided in regards to having children go back to school or continue online learning. While families do not want their children to fall behind in their studies, they also do not want to put themselves at risk of getting covid, especially those who are not vaccinated.
I think that the only solution to this debate is to continue Hybrid learning and allow parents to decide whether they want their children to attend school in-person or online. Hybrid learning will have to continue at least until the number of positive COVID-19 cases decreases or until children are able to get vaccinated.
With children able to hide behind a blank screen, I believe it becomes easy for students to disassociate themselves with their education. While your discussion states that this article focused on children, I think this loss from remote learning is experienced by colleges as well. From my own experience, I see that students are less likely to come to class or participate when behind a computer screen. I believe that remote learning doesn’t offer the same educational value and therefore may deter attendance. COVID truly has set this generation’s children back.
You present an interesting review of literature, and the topic is very important to the current situations of many students. I agree with Deirdre in the statement that older students, college and beyond, have faced loss in their learning as well. I consider myself a fairly good student, and during virtual and remote learning, I often found myself tempted to take shortcuts and easier routes to finish my work, and in discussing with my peers at the time, this seemed like a similar sentiment. With this being said, I can see this being an even larger challenge for younger children who may not have the same pressure or motivation surrounding their schoolwork.
Remote learning is not very effective for most students. Short period of remote learning may not affect students’ performance, however, learning behind computers and listening to zoom in a long time really discourage some students to learn. For my personal experience, who attended online classes beyond one year, I thought remote learning discouraged students to speak actively. Also, it’s easy to be distracted by the environment. Some students may take classes on the bed, and that can’t be described as a right attitude towards learning, and of course, it’s super common to fall asleep.