I don't think online learning means less teaching jobs because they would still have to keep the ratio (student to teacher) the same. If anything, you might have to increase teaching positions because some online learners need a lot of extra help.
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Just more propaganda from a bunch of self serving whiners !
Sadly every time the teachers go on strike, its not about the students. Its always about more money for the union and their members. They use the students and parents as their bargaining power.
Not to mention my job is 100% remote, online now, and a lot of people have moved this direction.
But I will admit, that in person learning is FAR more efficient ... there are advantages. I think what is missing is the
advantages of remote learning and business ... and weighing that against the advantages of in person learning and business.
For example, we can now entertain the thought of having someone in California work for our company that is "based in" Toronto,
hiring the best person in the job, without concerning ourselves of disrupting that person's family life and uprooting the spouse and children.
We don't sit on the highways burning fuel unnecessarily to drive to and from work each day, which helps climate change.
There are benefits to remote interaction, and these should not be discounted.
For remote learning, I think the system is crude right now ... only 1 year in, and people treating it like a temporary thing, so they don't invest time and money to improve the status quo. If we said that it will go 100% remote learning in the future, there will be tonnes of modernizations introduced to improve the learning experience ... so we shouldn't just give up on the notion of remote learning because of the current experience ... it can be made a WHOLE lot better, if people put their minds together and tackle the current challenges.
Apples to oranges comparison. Auto workers in the private sector are employed by companies that can pack up and take their business where ever they want. Teachers belong to public sector unions, employed by the government. When was the last time you saw a government of any political party play hardball with the teachers?
With on-line you won't need as many teachers assistance or special childhood educators in the class.
You also don't need to decrease the teacher student ratio to accommodate class sizes...much easier to have 30-35 kids per Zoom Class...like teachers used to be able to handle. This crap about class sizes is a job creator fantasy invented by the unions.
As with anything, technology makes things easier.
(caveat: a lot depends on what grades you're holding up for argument sake..big difference between 1-3, 4-6, 7-8, 9-12 etc )
Lots of speculation on how this "works" but how many of you are at home with young kids actually trying to live through it daily? This is my second time around. I was off from April to September last year, looks like it'll be the same this year.
It might look good on paper and some kids might take to it really well, but with kids under 10 not much gets accomplished in the day during class times. I have a daughter (13) who does well with online but isn't overly social at school. My son is nearly 10 and listening to his sessions in the morning is enough to make me want to pull out my hair. Teacher has to remind kids to get out of their bed and pay attention, turn the video back on or parents will be called, WiFi problems, kids unnecessarily stressed about technical problems over which they have no control. As Mark put it above, it's crude and has potential to work better, but many kids aren't going to learn well with it. There's no flow, and teachers have almost no control over virtual classrooms full of young kids.
Not to mention, online schooling puts other parents out of work, not just teachers. While it might work for older kids in the future, it will never work properly for young kids and parents from what I've seen.
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In our neck of the woods, there are students who aren't able to participate in online learning because they have no source (or reliable source) of internet provider. Teachers are preparing packages that these students can pick up at school and take home to study on their own. Until there is reliable internet for everyone in the province, online learning won't include all students.
That's why I said there's a caveat on what grades your talking about.
Both my wife and I took extended courses way back in the 80s. She took 3/4 of her BSc from a University in Alberta. It's been done for many years.
Some old guys might remember those courses that uses to be on cassett tapes..I took my grade 13 physics while I was away for 6 months.
It's going to get even easier now as kids get exposed to it in the earlier grades, they will be fine with it in later years...most high school subjects can be done on-line. Home-schoolers have been doing it long before Zoom !!