The 2022 Diploma of Secondary Education Examination (DSE) candidates are particularly difficult.
In the three-year high school career from September 2019, the curriculum content and assessment criteria of the core subject general education have been controversial and changed. In the "new normal", there are few face-to-face classes, and even fewer full-time classes—schools fail to develop educational functions such as fostering a learning atmosphere, providing equal resources, and promoting teacher-student interaction, and students cannot experience the norms of campus life ——In the end, it is still up to the family to decide the fate of the exam.
"DSE Candidates Under the Epidemic" Series No. 2
Jia Lang clearly stated that the entire examination process was extremely difficult. "Up to now, there has not been a comfortable space for me to study hard." (Provided by the interviewee)
Learning needs atmosphere
With the virus raging, the government and schools certainly need to do their best to protect the health of students and reduce the risk of community transmission, so the "suspending face-to-face teaching" is indeed a last resort.
However, while preventing and controlling the epidemic, the authorities should not ignore the educational functions that schools should have, and the norms of campus life that students should experience, because the essence of education is to educate people, and it requires teachers to preach, teach, and solve doubts—these functions Can not be separated from the campus, just as learning needs atmosphere, students need teachers.
The two-and-a-half-year epidemic has completely disrupted the normal educational life of students, which is even more of a blow to the DSE candidates.
The school originally set the minimum number of school days to be 190 days a year, but "Hong Kong 01" earlier calculated that the number of face-to-face days for Secondary 5 and Secondary 6 students in 2020 is only 92 days, which is not even half of it.
Insufficient face-to-face teaching hours and limited online class support will naturally greatly reduce students' learning effectiveness. More importantly, students cannot enrich their learning experience through interaction with teachers and classmates.
Fresh candidates Xixi and Jia Lang (both pseudonyms), who have just walked out of the "labyrinth" of high school for three years, both pointed out that the reason why the school can become a place for learning is precisely because its learning atmosphere is that of an online classroom at home. irreplaceable.
For example, Xixi said that studying at home is easy to be distracted, and it is inevitable that you will lose your motivation to study: "The school has teachers and classmates, and the atmosphere where everyone is studying and competing with each other can make me enter the learning state."
In addition to this, schools are relatively equal learning places.
On the one hand, students of different classes live in the same classroom, receive a uniform teaching method from teachers, learn the same knowledge, complete the same assignments, tests and exams, and develop similar values.
However, under the epidemic, classes are suspended, resumed, face-to-face and online classes are constantly changing, the original teaching framework is no longer applicable, and it is difficult to catch up with the teaching progress, let alone educating people and solving doubts.
In the end, teachers can only compress the course content within a limited time and leave it to the students to digest by themselves, and the students' learning effectiveness is naturally doubtful.
The poor living environment is one of the problems of online classes, which makes students not interested in studying.
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Family is everything
On the other hand, whether students can learn while sitting in front of a computer screen depends on the self-discipline of the individual on the surface, but in essence it also depends on the family's economic status, housing environment and family relationships - if there is no school and classroom This can be described as a place for equal distribution of educational resources. The background of students basically determines their future life path.
For families with certain economic conditions, parents can hire private teachers and purchase learning materials to reduce the huge impact of the epidemic on their children's studies through different supplementary learning practices.
But for grassroots students, online classes mean losing the learning space temporarily separated from society and family, and are easily disturbed by various things.
A family of four living in a small space, Lang Ming said that the entire exam application process was extremely difficult. "Up to now, there is no comfortable space for me to study hard." He recalled that during the preparation for the DSE exam, it was really difficult to concentrate at home. Review - I don't have my own study and desk, I can only review in the living room; sometimes the volume of the TV is too high, I hope to turn it down a little, it will cause the family to whisper, so I have to wear headphones to isolate myself... and so on. There are still a lot of small things, and it’s not that family members can’t accommodate each other, but when the epidemic encounters poverty, the problem will be exacerbated.
The house leak happened to rain overnight. One month before the official test on April 22, Jia Lang, who had minimized going out as much as possible, was still infected with the new crown virus. The rhythm of preparation for the test was suddenly interrupted, and pressure and anxiety surged up, not only for fear of affecting it He is afraid of infecting his family, but no matter how uneasy he is, he has nowhere to ask for help, so he can only fight hard on his own.
Fortunately, after Jia Lang recovered, a tutoring agency provided a venue for him to study in meditation.
However, in front of a large number of grassroots students, such a caring tutoring agency is just a drop in the bucket.
Xixi, from a family of three, has similar troubles.
He was studying at home alone, looking at the messy furnishings and messy desks, and his concentration was fleeting. "It's easy to get distracted. It's better to lie in bed, watch animations, read books and sleep."
Faced with various learning difficulties, grassroots students can easily fall into a vicious circle of not knowing how to enter school, having poor grades, not wanting to learn, and not being able to learn again.”
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Teachers and students need to interact
The role of teachers is equally important.
In physical teaching, the teaching and learning process of teachers and students is immediately reversed. The teacher adjusts the teaching rhythm by observing the learning process and ability of students.
Outside the classroom, teachers will also solve problems for students and stimulate students' learning motivation.
Xixi, who is not interested in mathematics, admitted that without the immediate supervision of the teacher, she was especially distracted during the online class.
Jia Lang also mentioned that when he returned to school to collect the DSE mock test, the head teacher who taught Chinese would take the opportunity to chat with him, reminding him to do well in the first part of the Chinese paper, but unfortunately he could not meet the other teachers who were teaching Chinese. Subject teachers for more advice.
When teachers solve the papers online, they can only focus on the common answering questions and points that need attention in the whole class. If students have questions, they can ask them after class. "But online teaching makes students have no motivation to ask questions."
Xi Xi and Jia Lang are both typical examples of low-level candidates, and various reports have long pointed out the difficulties of low-level students in learning.
The Hong Kong Association of Community Organizations released a survey report in October 2021, and conducted an online survey of 401 primary school children under the age of 18 in the form of questionnaires to explore the changes and impacts of primary school children's academic performance before and after the epidemic.
Among them, more than 55% of the students surveyed said that their academic performance has deteriorated a little or a lot, and more than 65% of the students surveyed said they could not keep up with their learning progress.
The report pointed out that in addition to the limitations of the family environment, the biggest reasons for students' performance regression include: online classes at home are difficult to concentrate, there is no guidance, and it is difficult to achieve learning results; insufficient learning support, students cannot keep up with the progress, which leads to a great decrease in learning motivation. , fell into a vicious circle of "unlearning, poor grades, not wanting to learn, and not learning again".
In such an environment, taking part in an open test with more than 50,000 people competing, the candidates who can stand out are always in the minority.
DSE candidates under the epidemic.
One | Three years of high school, three years of DSE candidates under the "maze" epidemic.
2｜Learning needs atmosphere, family circumstances determine everything