A million years ago COVID when I attended kindergarten, primary and secondary schools in Castries, the one thing most of us loved was the yearly warm feeling that came with going back to school at Bata Shoes – brand new pairs for each new school year, the shape and attractiveness have also been significantly improved if your passing grade was good enough to make mom and dad proud.
Half a century later, young people, students and children seem to be practically going back to school wearing COVID shoes.
The recurring decisions on whether or when to reopen schools “safely” have understandably created a carousel of worry and confusion in the minds of many, further exacerbated by opposition from teachers and principals over the basis of an alleged and acknowledged “lack of consultation…”
Worse still, teachers claim to contract COVID in schools from students, while working parents simply wish the “hybrid” extended learning approach would work well enough to allay their fears and worries.
And now the allegations of silence on the ‘small but growing’ allegations of alleged abuse by guardians and sitters at home.
But as pupils are footballed between the ‘open and close’ goal posts, based on the sentiments of parents, teachers and headmasters, education and health authorities, there is no absolutely no evidence of consultation with those most affected on finding solutions.
I looked at a recent report on four local students who won a UK-sponsored competition to describe explaining the COVID-19 experience to their children over the next few decades – and again I been convinced in a refreshing way that I’m still right in thinking that young people we make related decisions because we’re not “COVIDiots” but we think in many ways ahead of us, their vision and focus also ahead of every variant of interest or concern and every COVID wave.
They each gave mature, visionary explanations from their fertile imaginations about what they see life will be like two generations after COVID – if it ever goes away.
I also remember the pandemic diaries recounted by students at Sir Arthur Lewis Community College (SALCC) very early in 2021, when most of their parents were still very much in the dark about what the coronavirus really is – and which ( I understand too) will be presented in a new form on Facebook from 6-7 p.m. tomorrow (January 23), the commemoration of the anniversary of the island’s two Nobel laureates.
Both inspired me.
Next, I look at how teachers elsewhere (in Our Caribbean) relate and react to the challenges of COVID in school and their positions differ according to the leadership of their respective professional organizations.,
So instead of a unified Caribbean Union of Teachers (CUT) position on whether or not teachers should vaccinate, teachers are left (in many cases) to the judgment of union leaders who are either anti-vaccination, or partisan with the national political leadership.
For example, 70% of teachers in Guyana are recorded as vaccinated, but there is no indication of the level of vaccination among their Saint Lucian counterparts.
As such, teachers’ positions on whether and when schools should reopen are based on unsubstantiated arguments such as “many teachers are being impacted by COVID by students” and the resulting need to protect the former from the latter (and apparently not even the reverse).
One might have expected (back when we went back to school in Bata shoes) that the teachers, the “brightest” people in society, would have been leading the way today teaching the rest of the nation the ins and outs, the do’s and don’ts of COVID, like they did so long ago to encourage our parents to get the schistosomiasis and yellow shots.
Indeed, at the time, vaccinations were compulsory, because no child was admitted to nursery school without a “vaccination paper” (certificate).
But this is the age of COVID in a world driven by information available to young people, students and children 24/7 and at their fingertips; and I see every day how the majority of the minority with proper devices access the latest information faster than us parents and teachers on how other countries are dealing with issues such as the reopening of schools and the vaccination of children.
They see and hear specific reasons why schools are opening, closing and reopening everywhere else, while here receiving an unlabeled cocktail of reasons, depending on who is asked.
Although Facebook and similar platforms nowhere reflect the majority of the population, they nevertheless attract young people and children, who have easier and faster access to related information than teachers and parents, but who are not still considered worthy of consultation. on another subject that affects them directly, their health and their social wealth, today and tomorrow.
As with the right to vote, where young people and children who can read and write are still considered nobody until and unless they reach the age of 18 – and register – they are also shunned and have no say in how best to go to school SAFELY.
So just as I remember how the ‘computer specialists’ at the Department of Education wracked their brains to figure out how to find security codes to prevent ‘misuse’ of early sets of computers free laptops for schools, only for every security code to be broken laughingly by tech-savvy next-level students, we destroy ourselves again and destroy our brains to figure out the best way to keep our “kids” SAFE at school, not saying safe from what – from COVID alone or from COVID & Co.
And we continue to wonder why today’s out-of-school youth are simply uninterested in late fanciful discourses of “nonviolent conflict resolution” in a culture where violence is the order of the day and the number of notches on the controls of a Badman weapon. more of a ‘Due Respect’ model than the countless number of lives saved every time we walk or run away (even if living to fight another day…)
Under these circumstances – in Century 21 – we are sending the future of the nation back to school in COVID schools, purposely masking the time-proven dangers of excluding youth, students and children from discussions and consultations on the plans for their future.
