Wanted to make one about the topic of "no hello" first, but I figured that would use too much of my energy if I do that one for the first time.
The effectiveness of school as a whole would not be the main issue in this upcoming blog, it's to only mention the differences between online and offline classes, not to give an opinion on if schools in general works
It is what popularised online classes, or at least that made it happen for a good while.
Usually, no matter if you like school or not, school life is typically more interesting to be dealt with with face to face classes (assuming you're going the "right" way of the school life)
There are a lot more options for an "ideal" school life - during free time you can go to the library, the field, or stay at the classroom abd read some books/sleep. During class hours, you may learn via the textbook/notes, from teacher's speech, or sometimes even from advices of classmates. And with PE or Computer classes or alike where methods of learning are easily expandable, students would find different ways of retriving knowledge and ways of using the knowledge wisely.
Even a person who hates social interaction with a passion , would agree that physical interactions may improve the experience of school as a whole at some degree (assuming they are more tolerable). But with COVID, it takes away all of these possibilities.
People are creatures who tend to be more fond of the environment that they are used to, classes are no exceptions. However, it's far from what online classes gives to the experience as a whole.
Without any physical interactions other than looking at the device, not only do students have a much less engaging experience in general due to the limitations given by the online environment they use, teachers would also have a much harder time "getting into students' head" and give them what they think they should've learnt.
Classes that are supposed to be expandable are now stuck into the format of the good old classics, except the good old classics are now being way more restrictive than usual. Not everyone is equal, and it shows when some people in PE classes simply don't have enough spaces to move around, get the camera set to the correct angle, or even just jumping; or when during the computer class the teacher expects a Windows machine but one ended up using a Chromebook.
Not to mention that both students and teachers can get the feeling of being walled by the use of technology (or bloat if you prefer that), while some may struggle through physical interactions, many more struggles through learning new stuff that they may not be fond of using.
Punishments/encouragements are also going to be harder to be delivered in general, there are no physical ways of doing so, and when there are, it's going to be just like using online alternatives - people can ignore them.
Sure, if a person is bothered, they wouldn't need these things to tell them what to do, but there are people who don't, but if they aren't, they'd simply be ignoring these now abstract expressions. "I did good? Okay then that means I have no reason to be a tryhard." "I did bad? Oh so it's not like you can lock me down at school." Most people would need some form of concrete force/motivation, let it be stamps or speech, in order for them to learn some specificly required knowledge. With the layers given by the "online learning environment", the result just isn't going to be the same for most people.
This is probably one of the most interesting yet idiotic phenomenon I've seen with this online class thing. Instead of trying to find new ways of increasing engagement with students, most of the teachers are sticked to the old ways of teaching, with the exception of using new tools to attempt to recreate the old environment that obviously wouldn't work in any meaningful capacity.
Often times they'd also imagine monitoring students' device activity being a good idea, when with new tools, even if they aren't learning what you wanted them to be learning, there would be little to no use if it's likely only going to make that person get bored in the way you trapped them to.
They'd also like the room to be fully visible to them, as if they are supposed to have the same level of privacy. It also affects parents' privacy as most lives in the same environment with thier kids.
In a typical family, it consists of a person who work for money, and the other does the housework while taking care of their kids. Usually schools do most of their job for them since it means parent's wouldn't have the need to be bothered with them for a long time, but since there's covid, parents are mostly to be forced with their kids, and with great power comes great responsibility. Parents now need to take more time with their kids, and they also have to make sure their kids are behaving in an overly static environment.
Or they can also not bother with them as usual, which typically gives their kids even less of an opportunity to learn about basic social and moral stuff.
Not really. After all, most of what I described can be solved if society is built different, and there are already people who would be better off learning online. However truth is it'd take an absurd amount of time to bother with changing the society as a whole in order for online classes to work well in general, and until then, it'd be better to either change ways of online classes (which is the hard but better for the long run option), or to simply embrace face to face classes, or both, if they managed to find a way to properly test people on the "learning style" they prefer (which they don't).
____________________