Recalling back to my student days, I and my friends would be ecstatic about not going to school for whatever reason. Granted, the most extended no-school period would be the 3 months of summer break. I don't recall any kid ever actually wanting to go to school.
Maybe I'm thinking of this all wrong, but I feel it kind of hard to believe kids aren't liking not having to go to school.
Did school suddenly turn into a utopia of fun and excitement since the decade+ I was last in a classroom?
What I can believe though, is that some kids might be having a hard time not meeting and playing with their friends. But only a small handful of parents seem to be forbidding their kids from doing so anyways, so this still doesn't compute for me.
I finished my senior year of high school right when Coronavirus was starting to spread (and graduated in a mask), and I've got mixed thoughts about how this has gone down. On the one hand, I love online school. Zoom calls give me a lot of flexibility to create a better learning environment (listening to music, burning candles, being isolated), but it also takes the urgency out of it all. Last semester I failed 2 classes because the teachers didn't distribute a clear timeline of our work, which made it really difficult to figure out what was due, and when.
Ultimately, (surprise surprise) I think it comes down to an issue with our education system as a whole. Teachers are trained to get their students to "jump through the hoop", and when they fail they blame either the system or the student. The United States has an incredible opportunity to reassess what matters to students, and what the modern workforce is looking for. Our rhetoric around education is stuck in the last century, and we're in the middle of the largest paradigm shift the working world has ever seen.
Another tangential (but important) thing I've noticed is the disparity between our social messaging and teaching methods. Having spent the last 12 years of my life in a 21st century classroom, the emphasis is still on busywork (with an increasing amount of it automated or digitized. I empathize with the teachers who want to keep their workload to a minimum, but it's entirely at-odds with our social goals to make the next generation of students creative and leaders. In my Junior year, I took an AP Language+Composition class that handed out a grading rubric on the first day of class. Overall, the homework load was weighted as 15% of the total grade, so I simply didn't do it for the first trimester. When my teacher found out, he called me in for a discussion about "home life" and other vaguely patronizing things, but he seemed shocked when I told him that I saw his busywork as an opportunity cost. I felt pretty guilty for the next two trimesters, because at some point he just stopped handing me homework assignments with a defeated look. We shouldn't victimize students for thinking critically, and ideally we shouldn't even put them in positions where they have to choose between extracurriculars and practicing their times-tables.
My teacher said that without doing the homework or exams, if you got a 5 on the AP test then you could get an A, a 4 got you a B and a 3 or less got you a C. Homework and exams allowed you to get a + and could possibly push you from a B to an A even if you got a 4.
A day off and a year off aren't really comparable, though.
They're also still largely in school, just remotely. My middle school aged children have Zoom calls, remote band/orchestra lessons, classwork, etc. on their remote days - it's not the same as a snowday.
I've got two kids in middle/high school, in a 100%-closed-from-beginning school district (still closed).
The worst part of the experience has been the monotony of sitting at their desks all day experiencing communication solely via Teams/Zoom meetings. Combined with the monotony of most extra-curricular activities shut down, and a lot of friends lost to sheltering parents, it's increased the number of spontaneous breakdowns in our house...they're doing okay; they're mostly just disappointed. A big chunk of their childhood has been taken away from them, unnecessarily in some of our opinions.
What will suffer hugely into the future, though, is participation in sports, music, and other common activities. With a lot of them, like playing an instrument, once you break the chain, people usually don't go back. If we had maybe 40% of kids that age before that had no hobbies or interests to fill their time with before, we're going to have more like 70% now. What will they fill their time with?
I went to high school in the 90s and I would have killed for Zoom school. It would have vastly improved my mental health. Not having to get up at 7AM for a half hour bus ride full of tormentors, not getting shoved into lockers, not getting my lunch stolen, not getting gum stuck in my hair or having people putting out their cigarettes on my back. It would have been wonderful.
They were happy at first, unhappy two weeks later. The home school is strictly inferior - more boring, less discussion, less contact with other kids and teacher.
Then, holidays normally means a lot of activities. Travelling, camps, other kids to play outside with, parents not working and doing activities with you.
Meanwhile, lockdown without school means that you sit in your room day after day while parents work.
Recalling back to my student days, I and my friends would be ecstatic about not going to school for whatever reason. Granted, the most extended no-school period would be the 3 months of summer break. I don't recall any kid ever actually wanting to go to school.
Maybe I'm thinking of this all wrong, but I feel it kind of hard to believe kids aren't liking not having to go to school.
Did school suddenly turn into a utopia of fun and excitement since the decade+ I was last in a classroom?
What I can believe though, is that some kids might be having a hard time not meeting and playing with their friends. But only a small handful of parents seem to be forbidding their kids from doing so anyways, so this still doesn't compute for me.