FACE-TO-FACE CLASSES; HOW SHOULD WE CONDUCT THEM?

By: J. A. Cuaton

As we all know and from what we observe, students throughout the whole
nation are complaining about the difficulties they face in the flexible education
system implemented by the Commission on Higher Education and the
Department of Education. We are also facing many challenges during this
pandemic, financially, physically, economically, psychologically, culturally,
and socially. These concerns, which put us in trouble, raise the question of
whether or not we should conduct face-to-face classes. There are so many
considerations that have to be taken into deliberation before we decide about
that matter.
If we look at history, there have been many occasions when educational
activities were suspended because of pandemics. These suspensions have
eventually led to the intellectual demise and deterioration of those affected
students. We must remember that at these periods there is no technological
advancement, unlike what we have in our age right now. So to think that in our
condition today it will be difficult for us to conduct educational activities
digitally like online classes only prove that we are opting to go to our comfort
zone of learning.
But before we go further about discussing the positive and negative
impacts of conducting face-to-face classes for the succeeding school year, we
must first reflect on the impacts and lessons of digital and distance learning on
us. We will also look at how can these impacts and lessons become
instrumental for the improvement of conducting face-to-face classes and of our
education system as a whole. In the case of the COVID-19 pandemic, the
majority of us have only looked at the negative side of digital and distance
learning. However, looking at the other aspect is also important to have a
concise understanding of the situation.
During the time of flexible (digital and distance) learning, many students
have become weary and mentally challenged because the said form of learning
is an independent type that hinders most students from gaining learning from
the lectures of their teachers. It has become a major challenge because how
students learn is not derived from the traditional way of teaching. Above all
else, the students have become increasingly struggling internally and externally
due to the corresponding issues and problems that distance learning presents to
them. This includes lack of financial support to sustain online classes, being
unable to focus due to tons of distractions, and preferring not to continue
studying but work instead. These problems have eventually led to the
intellectual and academic deterioration of many students.
Another problem posed by distance learning is that there are courses in
which the students who are supposedly interacting with one another or with
laboratory and physical equipment are being unable to do on-site activities
related to their courses. This obstructs them from putting their lessons into
practice, thus, provides difficulty for them in concisely understanding those
lessons. This greatly impacted their lives and disrupted the way they learn the
things they need to learn in the traditional way of teaching. Aside from that, the
lack of social action also reduces the rate of social development of many
students. This is especially happening to elementary students who were not able
to play and interact at their early stages of intellectual and social development
with their fellows. This situation taught us how to appreciate social interaction
as a means to develop ourselves.
However, distance learning has also produced positive impacts on us. It
allowed us to know more about our preferences when it comes to learning and
gaining knowledge. It also made us ponder about the decisions and actions we
have made in our lives. From this pondering, we were able to create reflections,
and from these reflections, we can make ideas about how we can improve
ourselves and our standing in society, which has now become connected
digitally. This also allows us to create more proper actions and decisions when
it comes to interacting with people through digital means.
If there is one greatest thing I was able to learn from this scenario, it is
that history, if not studied, will repeat itself. During the time of the 1918
Spanish Flu (Influenza) Pandemic, many people were caught unprepared for the
said disease. The history of the “Black Death” (Bubonic Plague) of 1346-1353
that killed an estimated 20 million people, was already studied in the field of
history at this time. Unfortunately, due to many people at the time before the
Influenza Pandemic are unaware of the “Black Death” pandemic, when the new
pandemic took place, many of them have died and got affected by it. It was said
that this unpreparedness and unawareness of history cost the death of almost 50
million people, a much higher death toll than the previous Bubonic “Black
Death” plague. The same can be said of the current COVID-19 pandemic
because many people have neglected history and are unaware of what happened
in the past, we were caught unprepared in facing and handling the new global
pandemic. This eventually led to the deaths of many people and it negatively
impacted the economic, social, and political developments of many countries
throughout the world. If we were just able to learn from history by making
people aware of what happened in the past, the effects of this current pandemic
might have greatly lessened.
If we ask ourselves whether we should conduct face-to-face classes now
or not, we must remind ourselves that we have to learn from the mistakes of the
past to cope up with the challenges of the present. We must ask how people
during the time of these past pandemics have reacted to these kinds of events
and how they solved their negative impacts. If we learn from this, we can easily
create our solution and remedies by either employing the same type of solution
with some improvements or creating our own based on the solution and
remedies of the past (if there are). This type of concept can be applied when we
begin to open our schools for face-to-face classes.
We cannot deny the positive impacts that face-to-face classes offer to us.
Some of us say that through face-to-face classes learning becomes much better
and adequate as we have better social interaction with our blockmates, mentors,
and professors. Most suggest that face-to-face classes offer a different and more
efficient type of learning as it possibly allows us to have physical interaction
with the things we are learning. However, we must be objective and less
subjective when it comes to deciding whether we shall employ it sooner or
later. Objectively speaking, at this crucial moment, if we decide to conduct
face-to-face classes now, then we must be cautious and thoroughly prepared for
it. We have to create the proper measures, guidelines, orientation, and
precautions for it to become much safer and efficient than what distance
learning can offer. We must not neglect these facts, we are required to create a
way to make face-to-face different from what it was before the pandemic. I
know it is difficult especially for those academic traditionalists, but that is the
truth. Our history is advancing forward, and part of that historical advancement
is the improvement of the way we operate and perform things.
So to summarize it all, we cannot deny that distance learning has its pros
and cons, but we must remember that there is always a way to extract its
positive impacts from those negative effects. We must also be able to look at
our history as a model of how can we improve our present. If the same event
has happened before, study how they cope-up with the issues and negative
impacts of those events and look if they were able to gain positive impacts from
those events. And the most important thing that this article discussed is that
face-to-face classes have to be conducted again but in a much better and
precautionary way possible. In the new normal, everything changes, and it is
our responsibility to make those changes positive and much better than what it
was before.