The Pandemic of Distance Learning

I. Introduction- Abrupt changes in the educational terrain due to the Covid-19 Pandemic
a. Measures taken to ensure continuous learning
i. Limited face-to-face education
ii. Distance Learning
b. Pros and Cons of Distance Learning
i. Pros- minimized logistic and maintenance cost, modules can be reused,
favorable for WFH guardians
1. Minimized government spending on infrastructures and education
facilities
2. Creates a competitive market on LMS and education resources
application developments
ii. Cons- internet security, cyberbullying, harassment and possible
trafficking, lack of daycare for non-WFH guardians
II. The Crisis Facing Permanent Transition to Distance Learning
a. Psychosocial Issues
i. Piaget
ii. Bowlby
iii. Bandura
iv. Vygotsky
b. Sociopolitical Issues
i. Goffman’s Dramaturgy
ii. Arendt’s Conflation of the Public and the Private
iii. Criticism from Critical Pedagogy
c. Ethical Existential Issues
i. Levinas’ Face of the Other
ii. Solipsism
iii. Narcissism
 III. Conclusion
a. Cost Outweigh benefit
b. Recommendations
c. Future Prospects

I. Introduction

The upsurge of the Covid-19 pandemic into a worldwide phenomenon caused a

standstill for the greater part of 2020. With the discovery of vaccines some countries
are already at their feet, ready to move forward. However, little did they know that a
new type of pandemic looms at the corner-- a pandemic deadlier and its effects longer
lasting, the pandemic of distance learning.

In an attempt to gain sense of normalcy and ensure that education is still made
accessible, various countries transitioned to distance learning. Since the exponential
spread of the pandemic

Cons- internet security, cyberbullying, harassment and possible trafficking, lack of daycare for
non-WFH guardians

(Roncaglia, 2020) offered an uneasy take on distance learning—that is, distance

learning does not directly cause inequality but rather it exposes them by shedding light
into the matter. It signaled a detrimental flaw based on how education is perceived and
executed.

Crescenza, Fiorucci et. al (2021) published a study in early 2021 on the effects of
online distance learning to Italian households. Based on their survey, 84% answered that
there are no special interventions based on students’ individual needs. A standardized
approach ignores the needs of a differently-abled and motivated learner, leaving the
burden to the learner and their family to adjust accordingly. Not surprisingly, this might
appear correlated to their finding that majority of their respondents decry against online
learning being superficial and, as a result, unable to maintain the interest of the learners.
 While their research ended on a positive note apropos a relationship being created
regardless among the various actors involved in online distance learning, it nonetheless
ended ambivalently on its projection about how the educational terrain changed for good.

Zoom Fatigue

IV. The Crisis Facing Permanent Transition to Distance Learning

Given above considerations, distance learning appeared superior over remaining

alternatives. Its adaptability to any environment and circumstances ensures
continuous education despite common roadblocks such as interruption due to weather
or student health. In addition, it neutralizes ableism to some extent by harnessing
technology efficiently, making it easier for differently-abled students to integrate in a
school setting without encountering logistic problems due to poor infrastructure. .

a. Psychosocial Issues
i. Piaget
ii. Bowlby
iii. Bandura
iv. Vygotsky

Sociopolitical Issues
Identity, Public Spaces, and Conflation of Roles
As a political animal, humans remain in want of interaction and socialization. The
pandemic has brought notable restrictions on the
Reduced socialization compels interpersonal transactions to occur in the private realm.

Special attention is given to developing countries such the Philippines. Hailing

from a long history of political and economic strife, the country’s response on the pandemic has
been lackluster. While the citizenry remained compliant with government health mandates,

v. Criticism from Critical Pedagogy

 Among the three lenses offered in this tier most criticisms abound from critical
pedagogy. In the backdrop of a pandemic, children were forced to remain at school through
distance learning, hinged upon the premise that formal education must always endure. This not
only places undue burden for children to be resilient, it also validates the notion that academic,
curriculum-based education is more important than the extracurricular learnings which should
constitute the child’s social development. These very limited interaction confines children into a
one-dimensional stage where there is only work and no play. As it is,

While resourceful alternatives were set in place to ensure students’ continuous learning,
what it does is simply reinforce the pre-existing power structure within households.
Responsiveness and student performance becomes an additional burden to the parents, whose
role in their children’s education became more relevant, and students, who are pressured to
perform well---

Distance education exposed inequalities among students—those directly impacted by

lockdowns, whose family’s disposable income jeopardized, suffer from the repercussions in a
stronger magnitude than they would in a classroom setting.

b. Ethical Existential Issues

Taking a notch down from the political we revert back to the ethical. This section
attempts to reflect on the idea of what ethical milleu awaits a student whose

i. The Ethics of the Other

In ethics we turn not to the famous ones but to the Lithuanian philosopher
Emmanuel Levinas. Levinas in his writings have identified the other as the starting point
in defining the self. As it is in psychology, establishing the foundation of self has been
one of the most overlooked problems of philosophy. It appears that all throughout
history, alternative ideologies as presented by various philosophers have already taken
the I or the self, along with its predicates and attributes, as a premise. The revelation of
the self is almost always never regressive but progressive-- the actualization of human
flourishing, Nietzsche's ubermench, and the Hegelian synthesis are but three of these
actualizations. On the one hand, they project so grand an idea of human perfection, yet on
the other, they fall victims to what Levinas calls totalization by the very fact of imposing
and confining human experience into rigid and misguidedly over- sensationalized
imageries.

.
This is perhaps what differentiated the Cartesian method-- instead of proceeding to find the
actualization of the self in some future possibility, Descartes laid back and proceeded to examine the

foundations and establish that the self indeed exists by separating the I from the world. Contrary to

other philosophies whose being is bounded by time (was, am, to be), Descartes endeavored and was

able to pinpoint an isolated, timeless conception of the self by negating those which are non- self--

following his formulation, he rejected all that there is in the realm of perception, and was then able to

assert that the one doing the rejecting and doubting still remains. This separability of the I and its

experiences is subsequently echoed and criticized by his successors-- Immanuel Kant, for instance, in his

formulation of apperception rejected the primordiality of the self in relation to its experience.

What is notable in these ideologies is that there only exist two elements-- anything else that is not

the self is an experience which either constituted the self (Kant) or it has undergone (Descartes). The

Cartesian formulation in particular subscribed to the methodology of trying to thematize God as

immensely good that He will not fool His children, a premise which is itself an error in its crudest sense--

though not succinctly stated, Descartes generalized God based on his prior knowledge of the supposed

goodness of the Judeo- Christian God and was then able to "reduce" Him in the very essence of the

word to his own version of goodness bounded by human convention. He had overlooked the fact that

his very own conceptions are based on his experience, and thus, to attribute the goodness of God is not

intrinsic to Him but extrinsic in relation to Descartes' attribution.

Granted that it is no small feat to try and digest the infinite, one can at least give Descartes credit

for choosing a safe predicate in which to finitize God. Except that in this case, goodness as a term is used

as a placeholder ready to accommodate anyone venturing to understand the entire endeavor. Such is

the formidability of thought and its perpetual tendency to totalize, yet what we all fail to acknowledge

in this regard is that the attributes of infinity lies beyond our comprehension and thus is not graspable

by any means. It is unfortunate for Descartes to have dichotomized between the cogitatio and the

cogitatum, to hinge the notion of infinity in relation to one's finity which is inadequate, indefinite, and
delusional.

To speak therefore of the other in this regard is to speak of everything outside the cogito-- yet the

other is not merely an experience, and it is perhaps the reason why the Cartesian cogito is incapable of

comprehending it and consequently of deriving our responsibility towards it. For the self itself is

secluded, it could not extend, and whether or not it realizes its own infinity is questionable. As such,

how are we to expect it to render passivity and be obsessed by the other? Is conceptless experience

even included in the roster of experiences the Cartesian cogito recognizes? How does it fare with regard

to transcendence? Both the cogito and the transcendental apperception are incapable of channeling

infinity due to their reclusive and inclusive characteristics, respectively. Both cannot go beyond being, it

cannot "reach" infinity, more so project that infinity to the face of the other which is ever- present.

There is no such thing as forced invitation of infinity-- it can only be obtained through epiphany,

which then enforces a desire so ardent it, upon realizing the remoteness of the object it desires, projects

the desire into the nearest possible reflection, in this case, the other. This not done rigidly and does not

subscribe to objectivity; there is no definitive meaning and threshold of the self; and to recognize the

other in terms of the "I" is a futile and misdirect attempt to fully behold him.

ii. Solipsism
iii. Narcissism