Ethical Stance on Teaching: Comparison between Online and FTF Classes
The COVID-19 Pandemic has forced educational institutions to completely move from physical or face-to-face (FTF) to online classes. Even without being prepared and equipped with materials needed to deliver quality education, the institutions, especially in the Philippines, the school year has pushed through with online platforms. Instructors now have to deal with a variety of situations. Other hurdles include learning to use new technologies quickly, creating instructional materials appropriate for the new context, offering an interactive remote learning environment, and implementing new evaluation methods techniques.
But the struggles of teachers
do not just end with all the external factors, but also with the maintenance of
ethical standards not just before the pandemic with FTF classes but more so in
today’s situation with online courses.
When the pandemic was still
inexistent, ethical issues of teachers, although not usually rampant in social
media, we could still see abuses or unethical acts broadcasted through
television or radio. And these constitute actual cases in the Department of
Education (DepEd) or Commission on Higher Education (CHED), or the Civil
Service Commission (CSC). Although there are no studies yet on these variables,
specifically in the Philippines, I have seen news reports of teachers' physical
abuses of children for the past years. Traditional teachers, especially those
who also experienced corporal punishments, lead these abuses. For instance, in
one case involving the mistreatment of a teacher, a 14-year-old kid who was
recovering from typhus died after being punished by his teacher for not doing his
schoolwork
The face-to-face learning was
replaced by either zoom/google meet/modular learning during this time. But
abuses and unethical acts are still inevitable. Some students have shared their
experience of discrimination; in one post, a student was made to leave a zoom
meeting because she does not have a stable internet connection. There are others
who are even advised by their own teachers to drop the course if they do not
have a stable internet connection and so on.
The discussion on FTF and
online classes shall revolve not only around the teachers' unethical acts and
abuses but also the alarming effects of these acts, especially on the worsening
mental health of the students.
As cited by Malolos et al. (2021), mental diseases are the
third most common cause of morbidity among Filipinos, according to the National
Statistics Office (NSO). A prevalence of 16 percent of mental problems among
youngsters was revealed in a study of the Philippine mental health system. With
such a high number of instances, it's shocking to see how the Philippines is
handling the situation right now. The pandemic has exacerbated the already
precarious mental health of students, which has been intensified by the
government's lack of effective mental health policy. While there is a growing
awareness of mental health issues, there is a lack of child-centered
interventions. Approaches must take into account well-known mental health
effects on children as well as current and future societal concerns in the
Philippines. If this is not done, it is possible that, when the COVID-19
pandemic fades, a mental health epidemic will emerge to take its place.
Whether face-to-face or online
class, unethical acts by teachers shall always be condemned not just by the students
and parents but also by the authorities themselves; again and again, lawmakers
create regulations and other laws that prohibit the teacher from abusing their
position, but as long as the system goes as is, where corruption and
mishandling of cases exist, then we cannot expect any development or growth in
addressing ethical issues.
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