Staring at a screen hoping that someone is listening to you. Blank screens tiled with black boxes with white names plastered across them. This is our new normal. During the last few months, we have been forced to adapt to the foreign land of virtual learning.
Students are represented by black screens while the educator edifies, trying to capture their sullied attention. While it may seem like the opposite, studying in this fashion has taken a serious toll on the mental health of students. Studies have shown that e-learning has doubled the academic pressure and mental breakdowns in the student population across the globe.
It is a well-known fact that most teenagers are not the most attentive, and they tend to “zone out” quite easily. No matter how hard a teacher tries, the youth struggles to follow instructions and absorb knowledge through a screen. There is an obvious difference in the knowledge gained in person and the learning that occurs when you are in a more casual atmosphere, surrounded with distractions. Irrespective of whether we have truly learned or not, however, we are still being tested rigorously.
Even after 7-8 hours of online school, students must relearn all content themselves. Why, you may ask? Shouldn’t they have just paid more attention? It just isn’t the same, though, and that is an idea that teachers around the world haven’t grasped. Emotionally, being tested on an online platform evokes nervousness and anxiety from even the calmest people. The frustration of learning through a screen and then hurling that knowledge on to the same screen strikes a chord in most people. Even with education evolving, we haven’t been given enough time to modify our learning style to cope with the change of these online platforms.
Yes, it’s true. Academic pressure has always been there, even before the pandemic uprooted our lives, but we forget one major concept. As learners, we need to forgive ourselves sometimes. When we first learn how to cycle, we don’t get it right immediately. We skid, fall, and get hurt, but we get it right eventually. All we need is time. So even if we haven’t gotten the hang of online learning yet, it is a matter of time. Unless, of course, we can return to our lives as we knew them.
