Studying from home for a prolonged period of time and an earlier-than-usual summer vacation created a frisson of ecstasy among students, but it could be a menace to their futures.

What accompanied studying from home was the absence of school discipline, a dearth of peer interactions, and a lack of community activities. The consequences could be serious to their cognitive, emotional and academic development, which may endure into their adulthood.

Studying is supposed to be a persistent, committed and nonstop effort, which enables the learner to pick up, digest, memorize and apply the knowledge until it becomes his or her own. An intermittent mode of study, for one thing, could introduce only patchy knowledge to the learners. For the other, the inconsistent study without a teacher’s close supervision creates a loophole that some children may take advantage of to slack off or even cheat. The lack of seriousness and enforcement in home learning can only make students take studying lightly.

Although there’s probably no concrete proof of the relationship between student’s academic regression and school shutdowns due to COVID-19, research in the past is a wake-up call.

A study by the University of Maryland aimed to find the link between school closures due to snow and students’ academic achievements. When there were five unscheduled school closures during the winter, the number of third graders who received satisfactory scores in reading and math was 3 percent lower than during winters with no closures. In winters with 10 unscheduled closings, more than 5 percent fewer third graders passed reading and math tests.

Unscheduled schools closures aside, even a summer vacation can have students forget 25 percent of knowledge acquired in a school term.

Despite the remote teaching classes adopted by most schools in response to the school shutdown, how well the children get a hang of the knowledge taught in the virtual class is a big question. Some children take their online lessons nestling in the comfort of a sofa or bed, cross-legged, snacks within arm’s reach, which is a common complaint from parents. With all the distractions around, we wonder how much attention is given to teachers on the other side of the screen. The effectiveness of online classes is subject to debate.

Children of underprivileged families could be the most affected. Remote learning needs a sound internet connection and even certain mobile devices to support. That means children in poverty may not be able to afford the effective tools that attending the online class necessitates. The low-income parents may also feel deprived of resources to get home tutors for their children during the home schooling, which could be compounded by a job loss or pay cuts. Therefore, the gap of educational achievement between the rich and the poor would be widened.

Intellectual attainment is not the sole victim of a school closure. Children’s cognitive development and social skills could also go awry.

Discipline is one of the cornerstones of a well-ordered community of any kind, as discipline restricts each individual from going overboard while always taking care of others’ interests. But in the current study-from-home circumstances, disciplines and conformity go out the window. My concern is, in such a forgiving and loosely disciplined environment, the youngsters may gradually unlearn how to behave themselves in a group and social context. 

After all, one’s education in early years is paramount to shaping one’s world values, which will inform the grown-up’s moral and social behaviors.

In school, children learn to interpret emotional cues from peers, pick up the skills of getting along with others, and expressing different opinions, which all pave the way for them to transition into larger society when they reach adulthood. However, since school life has given way to stay-with-caregiver children’s primary opportunity to build up social skills is gone.

School closure is of overriding importance as nothing comes first before the mission of virus containment at the moment. It’s inevitable. But we may want to reflect on how we can turn the unprecedentedly protracted study-from-home situation to children’s advantage. I propose that teachers tighten online class discipline, and give quizzes and timed in-class assignments. For the parents’ part, they need to monitor their children’s study progress while letting the children chill out in the playground or do something together with their fellows, with safety precautions.

The author is a Hong Kong-based journalist.