Reading Reflection (9/20) Hao Zeng
Post-Covid 19 Science and Education
There’s no doubt that the unprecedented Covid 19 pandemic has posed
profound challenges to the world and our modern lives in almost all aspects. As
much as the virus challenged gravely human knowledge of science, particularly
medicine and life science, so did the lockdowns and quarantines to our education
systems and educators around the globe. From reading this week’s “Postpandemic science and education” (Am. J. Phys. 88 (7), July 2020, p518-520),
calls for political shift, cultural shift and educational shift stood out as three urgent
needs for all science educators in curriculum design to incorporate relevant
cutting edge information into class teaching, so that the knowledge could be
applied into problem solving to benefit our communities and society as a whole.
As some of our students will become tomorrow’s decision makers, educating ALL
students in critical thinking and problem solving capacities is of utmost
importance to generate next generation citizens for sound and scientific minds in
making hard choices. The current resistance to Covid vaccination in certain
areas of the U.S., resulting in the resurges of infection and losses of many lives
in those places, is a hard fact to swallow for us as educators and certainly a
lesson to learn in the post-pandemic era of classroom teaching. Although we as
teachers can not make choices for any individual, proper education nevertheless
is helpful to wipe out bias, false belief, superstition, and ignorance, so that in
situations like our current ongoing pandemic, wise choices for vaccination could
win the race of time with the spread of virus, and the entire community and the
country would be benefited.
In addition, Covid also made us more aware of the significance of
technological advances and the variation of education such as online schooling.
Before the pandemic, from what I know, few people (including myself) would
consider online school as a good choice for students. Although in my opinion, it
might still stay as a suboptimal option, particularly for those at young ages, it at
least provides a measure for families and students to acquire some learning
guidance while staying home for safety at the height of the pandemic spread. In
my own circumstance, my eight-year-old son stayed at home as a remote
learning student throughout his entire second year of elementary school.
Although it took some time initially for him to adjust to sitting in front of a
chromebook for instructions, he adapted quickly and eventually had a
fantastically productive academic year. With the advancing of technology and
the booming web education sources, it appears to me that online education is
becoming invariably important for schools, whether in-person or remote. With all
the learning materials posted online, the advantages of learning at students’ own
pace for mature learners could not be ignored. And the reduction of the vast
amount of physical paperwork for teachers is also an applause for both
environmentalists and educators. As stated from this week’s reading, outlined by
ancient Chinese wisdom, “in the midst of chaos, there is also opportunity.” (生机
）The worldwide Covid 19 pandemic has not only posed grave challenges to the
globe and mankind, but also provided us great opportunities in the meantime.