Far far away school
A few years ago, I liked to watch a television documentary entitled “Chemins d'école, chemins de tous les dangers”, in which we could follow children who were making an extremely difficult way to go to school. Their journeys to school sometimes took hours (or days) and the children had to face many dangers! It was so fascinating to see their eagerness to go to school and their desire to access education.
I remembered their enthusiasm when I was thinking about my distance learning experience. I feel that it is the exact contrary of my situation as a student, because I have access to education but I have chosen to not get into a school. But it is not quite that simple. This television documentary speaks of particular situations where it is the environment that makes the school accessibility so different. Geographical and political aspects are the main reasons for those children’s situations.
In our european society, and in the case of France specifically, we have a particular history with education and school access since the 19th century when school became a duty. At that time, schools were established everywhere so that every child could access to one. Today in municipalities with more than 1000 inhabitants, most often at least a school can be found.
So my paradoxical decision to study remotely was not due to difficulty of accessing a school in a nearby town, but was in fact the result of another revolution in our lives: The Internet. Does that fact change anything in the situation of the children from the television documentary ?I cannot answer this question, but it is interesting to consider this aspect that has developed these last years because many activities have become more democratic with the arrival of the Internet in the households all over the world. Hence it is obvious that the question of distance learning is different today than when I started studying twenty years ago because then we were still receiving printed courses by post ! This said, this practical aspect was not the main reason for my choice. I wanted to gain independence, and it was an opportunity to leave home and discover new places.
This evolution in the mean to study has made me very interested in the parallel of these two movements, going to school and bringing school at home as I tend to think it is a kind of extension of everyday life.
When I think of the children commuting to school in the documentary, I find that traveling ten hours a day to go to school is crazy, but isn’t it crazy to stay home and study more than ten hours a day? Even stranger, I feel I have the same smile on my face as the little girl who crossed the Amazon river on a small boat to get to school when my writing software doesn’t bug after five hours of work on an essay ! Isn’t that crazy !
I appreciate studying remotely, as it is a choice I made considering that I have got a job and that after twenty-six years-old we are no longer really considered as a student. Distance learning allows me to study while I’m in the workforce. I don’t work much but still it was impossible to consider not working at all, which would have been much more comfortable! I can say that distance learning is a way not to give up some aspects of my existence.
I’m happy to go back to study, to work harder than I’ve ever worked because I have a different relationship with learning that I see as an enrichment, a challenge. Still, sometimes, everything seems to reach such fast pace that I wonder if what the Internet allows is not a way to go beyond the limits of our human nature. The fact is that distance learning makes it possible for me to choose to study, but does not make my life easier.
Today, I really want to be a super-woman. The students that I «meet» for two years, and you may discover one in this blog, are in crazier situations than me and still seem to be very balanced. So, I do not deplore this situation. I think of distance learning as a manifestation of progress. While progress is wonderful, it is also scary, and makes some situations absurd, because we sometimes feel lost in translation. I enjoy having access to education as a 40-year-old woman, aware of what she’s doing, but sometimes when I remember what my student life was years ago, I regret my innocence and indolence.
Céline
Link to « Chemins d’école, chemins de tous les dangers » : https://educ.arte.tv/
Hi Catherine, thank you for your post. I met some of these children you describe in Suriname. Their father cross the Maroni River each day between Surinam and Guyane to bring his children to school. Well the most difficult thing is the most desired. Perhaps it is why we are so happy to be able to learn : we are more than 26 and education is not so easy to access.
ReplyDeleteChristine Rioux
Hi Christine,
DeleteYes, you're right. Céline's post shows well that what's difficult to get/access is usually appreciated as we have to make so much effort and sometimes sacrifices for it. When thinking of pursuing a distance learning course we should not think of it as a cushy activity.
Catherine
Hello everyone,
ReplyDeleteI have read your post and comments with great interest. I too enjoyed that film very much and it made me think long and hard about the access to education and how distance learning and the internet has been a game-changer for many learners. I agree with the last comment (Catherine?) that distance learning is far from a cushy acitivty and have just read a very very interesting report on the necessity for L2 online language learners to have grit: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/09588221.2023.2192762.
Hello Alison,
ReplyDeleteI just looked at the report which indeed gives an interesting scientific point of view on the need to have grit ! Thank you for the link because learning the L2 language makes me wonder about the failure of the 6 years of learning English in high school. This is the conclusion I made when considering the difficulties of communicating with native English in a real situation, and the same situation with the ukranians I meet in my work with whom I am not able to speak even if I have been learning Russian for 1 year and a half... this question is also related to my training in language didactics. I discover the many aspects of language learning that are often psychological aspects but also in prepare us in class to create opportunities to communicate, as a citizen. We have concrete needs today in our society. Anyway, it’s a bit far from thinking about distance learning and the report of Panagiotis makes realise the importance of remote learning environment distinct from face-to-face learning settings because in-class interactions within this context are very different.
but when asking the question of learning an L2 distance it is important to take into account already what does not work in face-to-face environment.
By the way, signed Céline
ReplyDelete