BAKERSFIELD, Calif. (KERO) — COVID-19 has changed the way we do so many things like working and learning at home. The push is on here in California to get kids back into the classroom, but there are also questions being raised about the future of education.
Local political science teacher Jeremy Adams shared his insights about the pros and cons of distance-learning in a post-COVID world.
"In some ways, educational leaders are always looking for that newest technology, that newest trick," Adams said. "I think that if you're a policymaker and you're worried about things like budgets, I do think there's a worry that they might look at zoom classes say, 'Well you know what, not for elementary kids but for high school kids, and especially higher education."
Adams published an op-ed piece in the Los Angeles Times titled "Distance learning? Even my students will tell you that’s not the future."
Adams works as a political science teacher for Bakersfield High School and lecturer at Cal State University, Bakersfield. He's been teaching for over two decades and says right now, we're in a time where the most important adult relationship for many school-aged children is with their teachers.
"As we see with so many of these young people, sadly a lot of those parental relationships are not strong," he said. "Teachers can kind of be a soulful ballast, if you will, in this sea of dysfunction that a lot of our kids operate in."
In his essay, Adams explains one of the biggest cons of distance learning is it allows kids to live in a "pajama life" whereas physically attending school is set up to mimic adulthood. Physical school forces children to get up, get dressed, live by a schedule that requires them to be at a certain place by a certain time and physically presentable.
Adams thinks that whenever the world returns to a sense of normalcy, kids will have the hardest time coming out of a "pajama life" because they have become too accustomed to a slower tempo of existence.
