Why aren’t some of my friends in school?
I’ve mentioned this before, but I have an 8-year-old brother and, because we are social distancing in the same house, I’ve been in charge of his education.
Basically, I make sure he goes to his online class with his teacher and I help him with homework.
I live in Portugal and, since we are still under lockdown and school Easter breaks are over, the Government came up with a solution to replace the physical classes. They declared that kids would have an hour a day of Television classes, and then they would have an hour of online classes with their teachers.
Two days after this started, my brother asked me why three of his friends were never in class. That’s when it hit me, some people don’t have access to the internet. So, I had to explain to him that not everyone is as privileged as we are.
That got me thinking, how many kids are missing out on their education because they don’t have the means to attend? And what solutions do we have for that?
If you look at Portugal, only 5% of families with kids up to the age of 15 don’t have access to the internet in their homes. To help these families, our government is giving out free hotspots and tablets so kids can go to their classes.
But, what about the rest of the world?
According to a UN report, as of March 2020, 166 countries had declared country-wide schools and Universities closure. And they all came up with the same solution — online schooling.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not upset with the fact that we are adapting to the situation and, the truth is, most countries are following the UN’s recommendation and providing a solution for those kids who don’t have a way to afford wi-fi and a computer.
I’m just worried about the aftermath of this method of education and how this is going to shape children’s and youth’s futures.
When I talked with my friends about how they felt about having online classes, most of them mentioned that they felt like they were not learning anything and were basically self-teaching themselves.
There’s nothing wrong with autonomous learning, but most of these people are paying for their education and they feel like it’s lacking something that will never be given back to them.
As for my brother, he just has a really hard time paying attention to what the teacher is saying because he is not seeing her, he is just listening to her voice while doing his work. And he is lucky because he has an older sister that can tutor him on the subjects he doesn’t understand.
But what about the kids that don’t have siblings or parents to help them?
This also made me think of something else: how not having access to education is a reality for many people in the world, even when we are not in a pandemic. Only in 2017, 262 million children and youth aged 6 to 17 were still out of school.
Not only that but, according to the UN, in 2015, 617 million children and youth were not achieving minimum proficiency levels in reading and mathematics. Of those 617 million, two-thirds weren’t learning properly in their classrooms or were forced to drop out.
If you think about it, this means a lot of young people are not getting a decent education — regardless of their access to wifi connection or the threat of a pandemic.
Right now, I think that it is a great thing that we are working on a way to make our education systems work.
One of the targets of SDG 4 — Quality education — is to ensure that, by 2030, all man and woman have equal access to affordable and quality technical, vocational and tertiary education, including university.
I think what we can do is spark a conversation about this topic. This pandemic is starting a revolution on the way we teach and the way we are taught but we can’t let the discussion die.
The world is changing and adapting, but we can’t live behind those who are less privileged.
