I Hate Online School

Can I have my life back?

It's been 212 days since the quarantine started. I wasn't at home every single hour of it, but the amount of time spent indoors is substantial. I don't hate online learning, it's great, with so many platforms to choose from you can learn anything. The problem here is in an online school.

No, I don't want to go to school during these times, but I don't want to sit on Zoom calls for 3–4 hours neither. I feel like this is destroying me, I hope that we will manage to live our normal lives someday, but right now let's talk about the school on Zoom. As a student, I just want to share my opinion on this.

Boring

Firstly, classes are so boring, that I cannot concentrate on anything. Mine and my peers’ attention spans have shortened so much during quarantine, that it requires an incredible amount of energy and willpower to listen to teachers.

Too easy

It's too easy to skip lessons, it's too easy to cheat, it's too easy not to listen. Why do students need to pay attention to the lesson if they can turn off the camera, open their phones, and play? When an exam comes, it's easier than ever to google or copy someone else's answers.

Distance learning struck a lot of students with the question: “Do I really need school?”. Studying a lot of things at the same time won’t get us anywhere. Maybe if I can’t get myself out of my bed in order to open up a Zoom class, I just don’t like the lesson? Why am I even learning this? Why can’t I just enjoy something else?

Why?

Why should I listen to the teacher? I don't even like this subject, I can copy the answers to the final quiz anyway. You can't just give us something you've been giving us for years here. we won't do this until you give us a reason.

The education system simply doesn't offer anything interesting to the students. Teachers are the ones who need to make it interesting, which doesn't work.

The only way to make online education worth it is to make the lessons about something students enjoy. You can't give us basic exercises that we've been doing for five years, but via video call, while we have phones in our pockets and other tabs open.

Recently I’ve spent 4 hours on a small project for our English lesson. The only reason why I did that, is because I could choose any topic I want, and write about it.

Such exercises can actually be very effective for some students, so I think that in order to make online education more interesting, we have to do more creative tasks and have a choice, so we don't feel like we have to do what others want us to do.

They had a whole summer to do something about online education, but what the hell did they do?

I hope that online education will open their eyes to a lot of students around the world and show them the truth about their school system. But for now,

I can't do this.