For most of us, shifting to a year and a half of online school was a bit of an annoyance and a difficult adjustment, but nonetheless we got through it. As someone who is in college, all my main formative years in school as a young kid were done traditionally: in-person with no masks. To make the adjustment to online learning now is not too bothersome, at this point I am ready for my degree and eager to start job hunting, but for those kids still in these formative years, school is a completely different animal for them. I feel as though online learning has made school less about creativity, and more about checking off assignment boxes and making due dates. This can not be good for students’ study habits and work ethics, something that was cultivated within students at my schools. As a substitute teacher in online class, I have seen so much more cheating, looking up answers, and almost no studying unless the teacher said otherwise.

Any struggles I have mentioned or encountered are increased tenfold in impoverished places, like villages in India. According to the article, a 4 year learning gap has developed due to online schooling. For example, a now-5th grader who was 3rd when the pandemic started, has the reading level of a 1st grader. Kids in these grades can hardly manage a few letters from the alphabet. This problem is not from a lack of motivation, however. In fact, online schooling does exist in India, and it is seen a surge in interest, with a handful of companies gaining investors. But this type of education mainly supports those who can afford it. About 77% of urban families have access to smartphones, and a little over half or rural families do. The true loser of education are those families who make non-salaried wages, as only 12% of their children have access to online schooling. Any possible way these children could financially raise themselves and their families out of their poverty has been stunted even more so by this pandemic. No access to any form of education makes it pretty much impossible to secure a salary-based job. As if education was already difficult to ensure for everyone, this pandemic has made the gap even larger.