Julia Esparza
Musci
Pre-AP World Lit 5th Period
Category #1

Everything has an easy way out. The easy way out of a bad hair day is throwing a hat on. The easy way out of cleaning is throwing everything under your bed. But for school, the easy way out is online classes. Taking online classes seems like such a good way to save time and money but really, it’s taking away a very important factor of learning; being hands-on. The point of having a real class with actual students and teachers is so you can work on things with people and work together with your class mates, to work on projects, have partners, and go on field trips. Online classes don’t offer any of that. With online classes, you don’t have classmates to work with. You may have a teacher you can email when you need help but it’s not the same as having a face to face conversation when you’re struggling. Also with online classes, how will teachers ever know if the students are actually doing their work or if they’re just goofing off playing on the internet? Online classes may save time, money, and offer more classes but without being able to do active things, without having actual interaction with people, and with students being able to slack off on work, it makes online classes not worth it and a bad decision.
Hands-on activities in school, such as field trips, are a really important factor of learning. When you go to the science museum, it makes learning about rocks and dinosaurs a lot easier. When you go to a Shakespeare play for English, it makes learning Romeo and Juliet a lot more interesting. Having actual activites to do in a class make learning much easier. Online classes take that away from students. I took and online class and all it consisted of was page after page after page of reading. It wasn’t fun, it wasn’t interesting, and it made learning a lot harder than it should’ve been. Without class activities and events, the class is no longer fun and that makes students struggle. Everyone in high school is a teenager and teenagers need something to keep their attention.
A huge part of going to an actual school with students and teachers is so you can learn how to interact with people. You can have face to face conversations with your teacher whenever you need help, you can do projects with other classmates and work together when you need help. Interacting with people at school not only improves learning, but it teaches students social behavior. With online classes, you work from a computer or laptop. Some people may choose to work in a library but most tend to work at home. This allows students to sit in there room for hours on end in their pajamas staring at a screen. And once they’re finished with their online work, a student probably wants a break so they turn on their TV and sit there for even more time in front of a screen. This can cause serious problems like becoming antisocial or having anxiety when they are out in public with a bunch of people. Students need to learn how to behave and interact in public with real people and online classes completely ruin that.
When it’s time for a student to go online and begin the day’s work, how many students do you think are on YouTube or a gaming website and how many do you think are actually doing their work? Online classes mean there really isn’t a