Distance learning having negative effect on child education - imagine that!

For many it is a necessity for Covid-19 spread prevention, for others it is a silly mandate towards a virus that has an almost 100% survival rate for children, most people don't know what to think and are probably guilty of jumping on some sort of political bandwagon and letting that dictate how they feel about it, but one thing is for sure - children's education is taking a big hit from having schools closed.

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Now, I don't have any children so maybe my opinion on this would be written off by those that do have children. I feel as though this is the wrong approach to take on a subject though and it's funny to me that the same people that will tell me that my opinion on a subject doesn't matter because I don't have any kids are the same people that have very strong opinions about gun rights despite not having any guns of their own.

As far as education is concerned there is no denying the importance of it especially at a young age. Almost all of the "clever" kids that I knew when I was as young as I can remember, like 4th grade or so, remained clever and competitive kids and this turned into them becoming, again for the most part, quite successful adults. I did reasonably well academically and I now own my own company and make a pretty fantastic living doing so. Much of this had to do with my parents being involved in making sure that I did well in school and there being consequences for lack of performance. I never found myself in a situation where I would have a virtual classroom as a child since the internet and computers for the most part, didn't exist when I was a kid.

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However, I do recall when i was 20 or 21 that I opted for an online course at my university that I eventually graduated from with a degree in construction management. This was a rather complicated math class that I do not recall the specifics of. When this class began it involved a lot of figuring things out on your own because the instructor wasn't able to have a hands on approach to the actual lecturing. I don't recall how I did in the class because I dropped the class very early on in the semester realizing that it just doesn't work for me. Later I would find out that around 75% of the students in the virtual class did the exact same thing. Why? Because the method didn't work.

Now parents are complaining in North Carolina that their children are falling behind as far as their education is concerned. These people are not identified as conservative or liberal so we don't know what their political leanings are and honestly that shouldn't matter because as far as being concerned about your kids' education is concerned, it shouldn't make any difference how you vote. Parents of honor students are being the most vocal about this situation claiming that they are accustomed to competitive environments where the teachers were very hands on and getting anything other than A's or B's is unacceptable. Now that they do not have any physical access to a real classroom environment their grades are slipping.

This is because the academic expectations of the students remains the same as it was before distance learning was enacted but the delivery of the education has changed dramatically. These straight A students are now facing the first D's and F's that they have ever gotten in their lives.

Some government officials are suggesting that the standards be lowered which is just a truly government way of solving a problem... isn't it?

In North Carolina the schools have been shut until the end of the year and I would imagine that this will continue well into 2021 as well. Governor Cooper has proven time and time again the he will continue to enact more and more restrictions in an effort to prevent the spread of Covid-19 despite the fact that all of the executive orders that he has made in the past have had very little success.

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He continues to do what I would like to believe is genuinely in the best interests of the people yet he constantly talks about "flattening the curve" (he actually wrote that exact term into an executive order just a few days ago as he extended lockdowns) in order to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed. Yet there is no evidence that the hospitals will be or ever have been in a situation where they would be overwhelmed in North Carolina.

Even when Covid was at its peak many months ago my own sister, who is a nurse at hospital, would be sending me messages day and night claiming there was "nothing to do." She, and several of her work colleagues actually were forced to move to other states in order to find work because there were no patients and therefore their hours were cut.

I suppose that is another story all its own and I don't want to get into a discussion about whether or not any hospitals in USA have ever been overwhelmed... all i can do is refer to the very real situation that I know is true because now my sister no longer lives in North Carolina directly because this claim of very busy hospitals simply wasn't true. She looked for work in other hospitals in NC only to discover that this same situation existed all over the state. Nobody was hiring because they already had many more staff than they actually needed.

But now the mandates and the closing of schools are affecting families in very dramatic ways. These lockouts are affecting millions of students all across the state and likely many other parts of the country as well. It's all very frustrating if you ask me and I am sure there are people out there that would jump to conclusions suggesting that I "don't care about the lives of others" because I think schools should be open.

I don't know the solution to all of this but I do know that kids definitely are slipping because of it and the claims by the North Carolina government that this is all to prevent hospitals being overwhelmed is a flat out lie. I just don't understand why they perpetuate it.