I have learnt much less from the curriculum … but much more from my home life … (Jesse, aged 14)

Over the last few months, I have lost count of the amount of times I have said or heard the phrase “we live in strange times.” This phrase has perhaps become a convenient by-line for our human experience of Covid-19 and lockdown; airlines aren’t flying, workplaces are deserted, schools are closed, students have been sent home from universities, professional training courses have been postponed or cancelled. This is certainly the strangest time of my life having been furloughed from work and largely contained within my own house and garden, clinging on to phone messaging, emails and video calls to maintain some sense of contact with the outside world. Although the natural world might be flourishing through this unexpected reprieve, our way of life, as humans, has dramatically changed.

Despite these unprecedented circumstances, many schools, colleges and universities have, as far as possible, tried to continue with ‘business as usual’. They have set up online classrooms and lecture theatres, adapted assessment processes so that they operate through virtual platforms, and even tried to continue with assemblies. But what are children and young people actually learning in these strange times and is it the same as what teachers and lecturers are hoping that they will learn? I wanted to know more, and so I enlisted the help of some of the children and young people in my life. I simply asked them to end this sentence for me: “I have learned that …” and they gave me some very interesting answers.

Fascinatingly, none of these children and young people referred to a single aspect of curriculum content knowledge in their answers. Not one. Gabe, aged 15, said “I have learned that you can get your work finished quickly and then do what you want,” which in his case, means that he has spent vast amounts of time whittling spoons and making knives. Keira, aged 12, said that “I have learnt how to Facetime people better … and that it is better for the environment because we are not driving that much.” George, aged 20 and frustrated that he had been forced to return home from University, stated “I have learned that I need company and socialisation, and that time with other people is important to me.” Miri, 15, and living in a rural community in Australia, wrote that “I have learned that you don’t always know when someone is struggling and it is always good to just ask.” Fred, who turned 14 during lockdown, spent a few weeks as a night owl and did his school work in the early hours of the morning before deciding that this wasn’t effective and reverting to daytimes. He told me that “I have learned that it is very stressful not having a teacher there to help you with your work if the work is hard.” This was similar to 10-year old Sally, who wrote (pictured), “I have learned that school work is a lot harder at home rather than at school.” Sam, who is 15, has felt demotivated, finding his work less interesting than usual, but has learned that “I am good at self-motivating myself to reach a goal such as finishing a set amount of work.”

Charlie, aged 15, also found a lot of the tasks boring as they were based on revising work that had already been covered in class. He concluded that “I have learned that our nation’s capability to education over virtual and technological means are severely limited to the level that education is almost pointless to those who require special attention.” Jesse, just 14, was highly reflective, and wrote me a long paragraph. He said:

“During lockdown I’ve been set online homework with no interaction with anyone else, my teachers or my classmates. During this I have learnt comparatively little both in general and compared to my normal school life … However there is a flip side to this story. Away from the schools attempts of teaching, I have learnt more than I ever would when I usually return home from school. This is because I am spending more time at home, and am subsequently doing more of what I would like to do, rather than have to do. For example, I have been reading comics that delve into politics, and are also an excellent form of literature (for example V for Vendetta which was written by Alan Moore). All in all I am feeling as if I have learnt much less from the curriculum … but much more from my home life, having had more time to indulge in what I am intrigued by.”

For me, these responses remind me that learning happens everywhere and in all circumstances. We are learning beings — we have experiences, we reflect on them, we learn something, whether or not we are directed to do so. They remind me that learning can be acknowledged, appreciated, absorbed and used to inform future ways of being. Or learning can be dismissed, ignored and forgotten. What will happen when these children and young people go back to school, college and university? What will teachers and lecturers say? Will they ask questions about curriculum content, and then panic because their students have not learned what the teachers wanted them to learn? Or will they say something along the lines of ‘we have lived through strange times — tell me what’s been happening for you, and what you have learned? Let me learn from you. Let us learn from one another?’ I desperately hope for the latter.

Douglas Adams once wrote that: “We live in strange times. We also live in strange places: each in a universe of our own.” For me, it is crucial to remember that although we are living in strange times, our experiences are all different, and we are living in our own, disjointed, unique ‘strange places’. Children and young people have their own stories to tell, and I want us to listen to them. I personally want an education system where the experiences of children and young people matter, where their voices matter, and where we care what they think. I want an education system which puts people before rigid curriculum content. I want a school system which caters for those who require ‘special attention’ (as Charlie explains above) and where all children and young people can have Jesse’s experience of having time to ‘indulge in what they are intrigued by’. I want an education system where Gabe is allowed to get his work done so that he can then do what he wants. I also want an education system in which the role of teachers is appreciated and valued, as Fred and Sally have started to do, and one where we all notice when people are struggling, as Miri has advocated.

I am fighting to create an education system which is a learning system, one that can reflect on what these strange times have enabled us to experience, and which is willing to change. I am desperate to see a new education system, one which is fit for purpose, and one which is re-designed to meet the needs of all children and young people. I hope that this can be one of the unexpected outcomes — a lasting legacy — of our experiences of Covid-19.