Getting education out of the box

I see a lot of very stressed people around me. Parents worried that their kids are going to be lifelong delinquents because school isn't able to teach in the usual way. Parents worried that their children are doomed to failure because 5th grade or 8th grade or even 1st grade this year was for many something of a write off. Teachers convinced that if their pupils do not complete this years' coursework and matriculation exams their students have no academic future and no possibility for gainful employment.

So they are trying to keep things normal. Give kids the same usual pages of their maths workbooks to complete. Give out the usual written assignments, whether or not there is bandwidth for teachers to adequately explain to the pupils what is expected of them. Parents pressuring their children, or being pressured by teachers to pressure their children, to keep up with their studies, with their homework, with their projects and exams business as usual, as if the world hadn't been turned upside down.

I don't say this to dismiss any of these concerns or to critique parents or teachers or anyone else who is concerned that children will not be learning because schools are either closed or face constant disruption from outbreaks and quarantines, not to mention that even when open their functioning is impeded by covid restrictions.

This situation is not good. I can say it no more simply than that. It is not good and it may not improve for a long time.

Attempting to just keep on keeping on as though nothing is different, that seems to me to be a recipe for more stress and more anxiety at a time when there is more than enough of that around already.

Please don't misunderstand, routine is important, learning is important. But recognising our dramatically altered circumstances and adapting how we approach both of these is no less important a life lesson.

Much as we like to maintain our regular schedules, sometimes, even without an apocalyptic global pandemic, life will throw us curve balls. Learning to roll with those punches, seeing our parents, teachers and role models adjust to this altered reality is as much an education as reading, writing and long multiplication.

In the midst of a global emergency we need to be focusing on survival, not worrying that a few months of disrupted formal education will damage our kids futures.

I hear a lot of people saying that kids aren't learning anything this year. In many countries and in many schools, with all the good will in the world, distance learning isn't always functioning well. And even if it is, it isn't always the best plan for many students, not everyone learns in this way for all kinds of reasons.

It seems like academically the covid months, maybe years, are going to be a write off to some extent/ There is going to be continued disruption from outbreaks, quarantines, activities that can't take place, restrictions on school life due to the situation - whichever way you slice it this is not going to be a regular school year.

Priority unfortunately I think needs to be on keeping kids as mentally stable and happy as possible, keeping them engaged with learning in some form, even if it isn't conventional or curriculum based, is of course all the better. Judging learning by regular school standards in such an unpredictable and unprecedented situation seems to be like a recipe for added stress on both pupils and teachers, and setting them up for failure and recriminations.

The other priority is of course enabling parents to work. At the moment the prime role of school is to keep younger kids occupied (ie childcare) so that parents can keep the economy functioning.

At the end of the day keeping the economy functioning, keeping kids and their families healthy, that has to be tops. Learning can be caught up when Iy"H this crisis is resolved somehow. I realise this isn't a popular perspective, but I do think someone needs to instill this in Education Ministries the world over over.

The state of the global economy means that money is tight everywhere, but budgets for WiFi infrastructure, equipping the poorest students with smartphones and/or laptops or notebooks and setting up strong internet in schools seems to be areas that governments should be investing in so that learning can continue remotely as much as possible and so reduce the need for in person classroom time and create a new distance learning routine that will help pupils to maintain as sense of normalcy even if they are in quarantine, become infected or there is a lockdown in their area.

Targets will not be met with conventional schooling methods at the moment. There needs to be more creative out of the box thinking about learning in other ways, whether that means more Brain Pop type online options, zoom classes, kahoots type games, telephone tutoring, production of new programming on Educational TV - learning comes in all shapes and forms.

Anything that helps to keep young brains curious, creative, learning new things during the current crisis, that is a good thing, even if what they are studying isn't necessarily part of the core curriculum. I realise that to many unschooling is a dirty word, but I think that in the present situation it has many concepts that can help maintain learning at a time when conventional schooling is problematic for so many.

Pressure to shoehorn conventional curriculum studies in to a very unconventional situation, that is not necessarily going to be helpful, only adding to stresses already faced by families and teachers alike.