Argumentative essay 'Face-to-face class (draft 2)'

The Meaning of Going to School 

 

    These days, there is a hot topic for many students concerning going to school. The various forms of a non-face-to-face class have arisen due to the coronavirus. Currently, with the continuous generation of mutant viruses, school attendance is changing from time to time. Opinions supporting face-to-face and non-face-to-face classes are divided according to their respective positions. Some support non-face-to-face classes, but face-to-face classes bring more advantages to students. 

 

    People prefer non-face-to-face classes because the contagious corona virus has not yet ended. In other words, if a large number of people spend time in schools, there will be more possibility of coronavirus infection. However, the Ministry of Education paid more attention to manual quarantine activities and placed many facilities in schools to avoid contact between students. In fact, there is no large-scale mass infection started in school. The Ministry of education shows  people an educational field manual in preparation for the COVID-19 situation, and provides related information publicly and steadily so that classes can be taken in a safer environment (교육부). 

 

    In addition, not going to school does not mean that people always stay home to keep themselves from the virus. While not going to school, students visit places that do not follow quarantine rules well and are vulnerable to keeping quarantine. For example, there is news about coin karaoke rooms where people take off their masks while singing or enter without writing a list of visitors (영남일보 2020). There are five directly confirmed cases related to coin karaoke in Changnyeong, and two were confirmed due to contact. One of the confirmed case is a 16-year-old middle school student. Therefore, the quarantine authorities worries about the use of crowded places by students during all non-face-to-face classes (news1 2021).  

 

    Starting with non-face-to-face classes, many things have changed to non-face activities. Regardless of COVID-19 when the 4th Industrial Revolution, big data, and artificial intelligence have emerged as future businesses, many people are interested in non-face activities nowadays. However, the lecture-style teaching method is the same in whole classes, but it is less efficient because it changes from offline to online. Online classes arenot much different from an offline class. Likewise, if a professors who are not used to having classes with programs like webex or zoom, students will take classes with poor quality. In fact, a university in Daegu had a hand-written poster pointing out the professor's incompetence (KBS NEWS 2021). For example, professors keep reusing video recorded for last year’s lectures in non-face-to-face classes or only reading textbooks as they did. As such, we still need face-to-face classes because we have not yet established the forms of non-face-to-face classes that we ideally think of. 

 

    Non-face-to-face classes and face-to-face classes should not be considered in black and white, but our society still has a lot to prepare for non-face-to-face classes. The risk of infectious diseases is everywhere, so it is difficult not to take face-to-face classes just because of COVID-19. Also, since not all learners and instructors started non-face-to-face education with complete knowledge of how to use information technology, there are many problems in managing classes. For this reason, face-to-face education should be prioritized. School is not just a place to learn information, but a place to learn how to live with others as a small society. We still have to learn how to live with others rather than how to live with computers. 

  

    “개학 앞두고 붐비는 코인노래방...방역 관리 부실로 집단감염 우려”. 영남일보, yeongnam.com. 2020. Web. 9, Dec, 2021. 

<https://www.yeongnam.com/web/view.php?key=20200519010002553> 

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    “등교·원격수업 관련 정보”. 교육부.  moe.go.kr, 2021. Web. 9, Dec, 2021.  

<https://www.moe.go.kr/sub/infoRenew.do?m=031301&page=031301&s=moe> 

    “'수업 손놓은 교수들?' 사범대학 학생들이 분노한 이유는”. KBS NEWS. news.kbs.co.kr. 2021. Web. 9, Dec, 2021. 

<https://news.kbs.co.kr/news/view.do?ncd=5338980&ref=A>