July 2021
‘Would you like to take a crash course in guitar?’ asked my mom one fine evening. ‘Why not!’ was my reply.
‘When do we start, where do I go?’
‘Obviously you start tomorrow and you go nowhere,’ answered my mom, ‘it’s online.’
OMG! Another online school, no way!
There was a time when I, Mankirat of grade 8, could give anything for an online course. But definitely not anymore! What had started as fun seems to have become a never-ending nightmare.
Some time ago, I started getting an irritable red, a lot of itching and also some pain in my eyes. Therefore, I decided to research and find out the cause of it. To my horror, I came up with the fact that the blue light which comes out of the screen of I-pads can easily cause damage to the retinal cells of eyes, according to preventblindness.org. Perhaps that was the reason why my eyes used to become red and they used to itch a lot. Additionally, I read that blue light also reduced the amount of sleep I had every night. Therefore, I took the most appropriate action. In order not to stress my eyes too much, I increased the font size and reduce the brightness of my screen while taking online classes.
Then, during online school, not only did my weight increase, but my munching habit also worsened. Packing off the bag and going to school means that we are busy shunting in and out of classes and eat only during the break time. But online school means eating whenever I want to. As many children keep their cameras off, class tends to become akin to looking at a blank wall at times. This makes me sleepy and then in order to keep awake, I go looking for stuff to eat. And, when I actually eat that stuff, it leads to excessive weight gain. This sets in a vicious cycle which is so difficult to break.
Ask anyone and they will tell you that online schooling does not provide the informal social interactions which students have at school. In addition, the physical presence of the teacher is missed which creates a barrier in the impart of knowledge. Also, the students as well as the teachers face numerous distractions at their houses which tend to sway them away from any real learning. Therefore, I personally believe that online school is equal to not attending any school at all as children hardly learn anything.
It is but conclusive to advocate that online school is a total disaster! It is nothing more than an eye wash and needs to be quickly replaced with the age-old offline school system if we want to provide meaningful, realistic and consequential education to our students.
Writer : Mankirat Singh
Grade : 8 (Year 2021)
Place : Stockholm, Sweden
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