Written by Mohammed Safieddine, Year 11 (2019)
Education online is progressing, and so is education the old school way, but which will prevail? Online schooling has always been a very new concept to parents; they never experienced the privilege of studying from the comfort of their bedrooms or dining tables. They were forced to wake up at early hours and spend as much as eight to nine hours at their schools, and they were bred to endure the stress of those long hours while balancing a social life and also their hectic family life, and don’t forget the loads of homework. This can all be avoided by one attending online school; just take a moment to imagine how good it could be if you attended an online school considering that high schoolers now have the same anxiety levels that patients at insane asylums had in the 1970s.
In contrast, learning in traditional classrooms is much more professional in terms of interactions and exchange of knowledge. The student will feel somewhat of a connection with the teacher instead of just talking to a camera or a screen. In traditional classrooms, students can just raise a hand to politely ask questions, whereas, in online schools it feels more like you are talking to a robot, and what if one has slow WiFi connection or simply does not attend class? Students attending online schools are more inclined to skip classes and cheat during tests and exams with a simple Google search because the teacher is not there to stop them.
While traditional classes can feel more real, attending an online school will make the process much faster and feel more personalized. This stems from the idea that the teacher or lecturer is there just for you almost as if you are in a private lesson, which means the focus is on only the student without other student’s noise and chatter.
A study by the British council was carried out to truly find out whether students in online schools perform better than students in traditional classrooms by comparing their IGCSE grades, during the same year with the same syllabus, and the results show that students in online schools performed almost 30 percent better than those in traditional classrooms.
Traditional schools and classrooms may not produce the best students statistics-wise, however, they do motivate the student the most. The idea of attending a somewhat boring class with a group of friends or with one simple close friend can make the class ten times more interesting and fun just because that one friend is next to you. This to some, can be seen as a form of distraction but it’s just a coping mechanism for us teenagers. Let’s not forget that one funny or silly classmate that made everything better, or that really smart girl or boy that made you work harder just so you could be as smart as them.
In a nutshell, both online schools and traditional classrooms have their advantages and their disadvantages. However, it can be concluded that traditional classrooms can be much more memorable and in reality much cheaper than online schooling. And in my opinion, traditional classrooms and ways of teaching are much more reliable.