The untoward consequences of the global pandemic continue to haunt us. As adults, we have generally responded with the resilience that age and maturity offer us, and have managed to negotiate our way through life and work having weathered the initial storm, but there is more hurt, on the way.
But what about the younger generations? Socially, they have had the ‘sobering’ experience of isolation, just when they are in the midst of their academically formative years. Whether 5 or 15 at the time, studies by the London School of Economics, the University of Glasgow and many others in the academic sector, have recently opened debate as to the social and academic trauma facing these young people, in schools, high schools, secondary and even higher education.
Their experience, our failure to recognise and respond to the new school and pupil dynamic that has resulted from the pandemic, and to help these young people through this destabilising experience. A BBC Panorama investigation found, in fact, that young people now aged between 16 and 25, were likely to lose their jobs, or give up on their studies than earlier generations, leaving no doubt that the uncertainty and upheaval of the pandemic have severely affected their mental health.
And why wouldn’t it? After all, Covid wasn’t just a flu... it was a killer, a malignant, invisible reaper, and few families or friendship circles remained unaffected by loss. Yet what did we do? All we could of course. We didn’t want to lose our kids, so we locked them up, and force-fed them a diet of ‘fast-food education,’ on TEAMs or ZOOM. I mean... what else could we do?
What else could schools, or teachers do? And while they did their best in an ‘alien’ environment, and breathed a massive sigh of relief when it was all over, they, and we, neglected the learner’s wellbeing. We didn’t focus, at all, on their potential anxieties or insecurities, or the sensory overload, the ‘car crash,’ of being ‘back to normal.’ It was just like someone being released from a jail, and with no support just being kicked back into society, a society that had silently and with incredible subtlety, ‘moved on.’
So, once again... surrounded by people, they had to adjust, find old friends, make new friends, establish new relationships. Actually, for many, find, make, and mend relationships, deal with loss, deal with change, deal with disappointment as few coped with, or managed their studies effectively. It was a disaster, and why? Because we were doing the same for ourselves, and we didn’t think, did we? After all, kids are resilient, they’ll bounce back, as kids do... we treated their total experience of the pandemic like a skinned elbow or a grazed knee... and put a sticking-plaster or a bandage on it. Our care was so facile. It was either ‘kiss-it-better,’ or, “It’ll be alright.”
The upshot, declare Sarah Mervosh and Claire Millar in the New York Times, are kids that “Can barely speak, sit still, or hold a pencil,” and certainly teachers are being confronted only now with Year 10 students who cannot read the alphabet, use punctuation, read, write, add, subtract, multiply or divide... and as parents, we should have seen it coming, but we were nearly all busy fighting our own fires, weren’t we?
So, we would deal with our ‘stuff’ first, and then ‘look after’ the kids. The problem is that we rarely saw their educational experience, their learning, as something we needed to be involved in... did we? And while I am certainly being critical, I still can’t find it in me to be terribly judgemental of the parents and teachers who didn’t see this storm coming. None of us were prepared for the pandemic, because we all thought we were ahead of the curve, and by the time we found out we were out of our depth... we were drowning!
Survival was for the fittest, that’s for sure, and being defeated for a time was forgivable, but giving up never is... so let’s not give up just as the real hurt starts.
Ray Petersen
The writer is a media consultant
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