Reply to My daughter is in honors Bio and has never had a real lab

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Reply to "My daughter is in honors Bio and has never had a real lab - all are simulated or online "

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I mean is this normal?  They literally are almost done half the year and they have never done a lab.  Nothing.  Only papers and a Chromebook.  I understand during Covid, but why aren't they getting more hands on. [/quote]

- Pre-covid there were already a lot of online simulations being developed and in use. The pandemic really pushed companies to expand and refine their online offerings. A lot of high-quality resources are available now.

- Kids have been steadily losing basic hands-on skills (think arts & crafts) for the past decade. Smart phones and video games are far more enticing than building things with your own hands. HS students can't manage scissors, paperclips, stapling papers together. Put real lab materials in front of them and at best they stand around not knowing what to do and unwilling to touch the materials. At worst they are foolish and play around destroying things. (And yes, I'm talking 15, 16, 17 year old in Honors science classes.)

- On top of the general decline in hands-on capability, the 2-3 year disruption of virtual instruction + return means that now MS kids have ES lab skills/behaviors and HS kids have MS lab skills/behaviors. Any lab that used to take 1 day now takes 2 days, even if the kids are focused. But really, as soon as you shift to something more unstructured as a lab, the phones come out so either it takes even longer and 1/3 of the kids get nothing out of the lab because they will just copy the answers from someone else and spend their time watching sports or shows.

- Add on top of this general dysfunction the overcrowded classes, time and expense of lab materials, set-up, and clean-up, an ever revolving door of who is absent, and parents who complain about their kid not being taught what ends up on a test. It's just easier and more consistent to use simulations whenever they exist. 
** Kids can make-up the work if they are absent. 
** Teachers can post answer keys for the simulation. 
** Students focus more using the simulations than they do with real materials.
** Students can collect clean data that shows the relationships they are supposed to see.
** Classroom management and suppressing phone use is easier. 
** No time spent on set-up and clean-up.

That's why there aren't real labs anymore.
-HS science teacher[/quote]

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