[코로나19와 싸운 1년] ② Blanks left by remote classes
Class at home difficult class student
In addition to severing relationships, free meals are also stopped.
Anxiety and depression are high, but the countermeasures are holes
A teacher teaches online at a high school in Seoul. By Park Jong-sik, staff reporter [email protected]
Group A, a third-year student attending an elementary school in Seoul, rarely participated in the remote class held in the first semester last year. The smartphone was broken, but it was not easy to share the smartphone of my 6th grader sister. The school informed me that “they are lending smart devices for free,” but my mother, the only guardian, didn’t want to. He thought, “If you rent and break it, it will be more troublesome.” My mother said to A-gun, “I will buy a new smartphone,” but she could not keep her promise. In order to maintain her life, she went out early in the morning and came back at 12 pm. Eventually, during the remote class, the brothers and sisters, who were left alone at home all day, had to spend a free time roughly eating lunch and dinner. This situation continued until September of last year, until the teacher in charge of the group called “A” to school, saying, “It is a remote class period, but let’s just study together.” A-gun came with her sister at this time. When asked why, he said, “I came with me because I was lonely.” The school, which opened in April of 2020, swept by the typhoon of Corona 19, was finally closed with the’online closing ceremony’. As school classes expanded after the Chuseok holiday, I wanted to see students crowded as usual, but soon after the third fashion hit, the school became a space without students. Last year’s curriculum and academic calendar went as planned thanks to the mobilization of all resources, such as distance classes, just like the graduation ceremony of graduates who recently held bouquets in their homes and reflected their faces on the video. However, there are not many students, parents, and teachers who believe that the so-called’K-Edu’ was able to properly fill the vacancy in the school.
_________
School vacancies greater than’education loss’
After experiencing the divorce of her parents in middle school, Yang was so hurt that she remembered the extreme choice. With the opportunity to go to high school last year, Yang and his family made up their minds to start anew in a new environment. However, as the distance classes started at the beginning of the school year became longer, a’new environment’ was not given to Yang. Then, he said, “Is high school so difficult?” and finally began to complain of depression and helplessness, saying, “I have failed in interpersonal relationships.” Even if the teacher told me that it was a “problem that everyone faces,” I didn’t take the advice easily because I couldn’t directly experience a relationship that could be felt. After several consultations, and after the start of school classes, a new relationship was established, her condition began to improve little by little. A high school teacher in Seoul also said this. “In public high schools, there are children who are a kind of refuge before schools are simply places of education. It is difficult to endure at home, so it becomes such a space where you can escape there, leave yourself in a space called school, and live a normal life like other friends. But when the school stops, the function also stops. There is nowhere to go. If you endure such a situation alone (at home), it turns into depression. For some children, schools are the only place where they can receive support, support and emotional support from their parents.” When distance classes were introduced, the first concern was’academic loss’, but the actual school vacancy exceeded the scope of the education loss. Learning from distance classes can be time-consuming to some extent, but the school’s ability to care for and develop students in a comprehensive dimension such as life, health, relationships, and emotions could not be replaced. Starting with getting up early in the morning and spending regular time according to the plan, meeting friends of your age, establishing relationships with nutritionally balanced meals, seeing and learning from adults who are not parents, etc. The growth was braked all at once. Teachers and educational workers said, “Even though the students are struggling, it seemed like I was walking on a thin ice plate all year long because I didn’t know.” Since students cannot see them in person, they are seldom able to find problems that they would have found at the beginning of the school year. There were many cases where persistent problems such as neglect and abuse occurred in the home were discovered only in the middle of the second semester. Roh Kyung-eun, an educational welfare coordinator who works in the Gyeonggi area, said, “It was difficult to find out, so last year, reports of suspected child abuse in schools decreased than before. However, with the increasing number of extreme choices and attempts, the pattern has become more serious.”
_________
The core problem is the gap… The vulnerable class is helpless
The most serious problem is the fact that the influence of school vacancy varies according to the socioeconomic and cultural background of the student’s family. As they couldn’t go to school, the middle class and above used their families as a base to mobilize all of their private resources, whether it was private education or home study. However, the vulnerable, whose homes were more disadvantageous than schools, were helpless. During PE time last year, which consisted of video lessons, middle school student C had no choice but to look at the screen of his smartphone. It was a class where the physical education teacher showed the gymnastic movement first, and the students followed it, but C-gun’s house was too narrow to follow the teacher’s movements, such as moving his body. This is an example of a gap that did not appear in school classes, depending on the residential environment. Poor living conditions in C-gun not only affected the failure to properly attend classes, but it is highly likely that it also affected the health of C-gun. Gyeonggi Education Research Institute conducted a survey to examine the impact of Corona 19 in July last year, asking about 20,000 students in Gyeonggi-do to choose’people who spend time together on days when they are not attending school on weekdays’. Of the students whose family’s economic level is’superior’, 52% cited’guardian’ and 15% cited’alone’. On the other hand, only 35% of students who belong to’lower’ cited’guardian’ and 28.6% cited’alone’. On weekdays when there is no class, 9.7% of’higher’ students answered that they never or hardly eat lunch, but 24.5% of’lower’ students. Students with low economic level at home or without caregivers during the day showed higher anxiety about the future and depression of the day when they were not attending school. Accordingly, the education authorities promised to support the vulnerable, saying, “We will strengthen the safety net for quarantine, learning, and caring.” It includes measures such as introducing artificial intelligence (AI) learning, activating real-time interactive classes, and reinforcing small-group customized face-to-face guidance to students in need. However, it is pointed out that there was a lack of’legs’ that connect students who actually need help with the system. A teacher in Seoul, who has participated in the’Learning Partnership 119′ campaign, which voluntarily provides face-to-face guidance to students in need since the second semester of last year, said, “It is an excuse to meet students in person and understand what difficulties they face, and to connect resources inside and outside the school. The placement of’support teachers’ who do the job is most urgent.”
_________
If distance classes become everyday, the functions of education should also be expanded.
One of the other changes that one year of Corona 19 has brought to the education scene is that among students, the perception of “going to school every day” itself is fading. Distance classes are included in the number of class days, and the range of experiential learning that allows attendance, such as home study, has expanded. Even when not taking full-scale remote classes, there were many cases of going to school in the form of a’stepping bridge’ because of quarantine. Last year, the number of legal school days in elementary and secondary schools was 171 days, down 10% from the previous year, but it is estimated that the actual number of school days for most students is only about one-third, except for the third year of high school, where’everyday school attendance’ was the principle. In particular, the metropolitan area, where the corona 19 epidemic was severe, is likely to be less than this. A teacher at an elementary school in Seoul said, “Actually, considering the day I came to school, it is less than 30 days in a year. Some students are less than 20 days old.” Looking at the statistics until the first semester, the average number of days to attend elementary school in Seoul was only 11.6 days. At school, we are concerned that students’ perceptions of school are fundamentally changing. An elementary school teacher in the Sejong area said, “After going to school for a while, the distance between them went up and changed to’once a week’, but most of the children responded to’It’s one day a week, so should I come out?'” . He said, “I use remote classes as an opportunity for’future education’, and it is questionable whether the words include the meaning of not having to go to school in the future.” A high school teacher in Seoul said, “Even if students sometimes come to school, they are busy performing overdue assessments, but because of quarantine, they could not talk properly and do various activities.” “I am worried that the reason for going to school will gradually become blurred.” . It is pointed out that the cumulative problem of public education, which has been emphasizing only knowledge transfer and evaluation, has now been exposed. The pretext and meaning of school should not only be confined to learning, but should be expanded to provide universal welfare for children and adolescents, taking the corona 19 as an opportunity. Kim Hyun, a teacher at Shinhyun High School in Seoul, said, “If we can borrow the power of digital tools for knowledge transfer in the future, the nature of education should be established as a comprehensive’care’, such as feeding and caring for children, supporting them emotionally, and making them talk to each other. I said. Kim Gyeong-ae, head of the Education Welfare Research Department at the Korea Educational Development Institute, raised the need to establish a’small group of strong solidarity’ that the vulnerable can rely on outside of the school. Kim said, “If schools have been pursuing’educational welfare’ to provide the same education regardless of family background, etc., after Corona 19, a’learning life welfare’ system that can provide the same education even if students are not You have to make it. Last year, our society succeeded in matching the number of school days and academic management, but failed to create such a community.” By Choi Won-hyung, staff reporter [email protected]