CONFLICTING EMOTIONS

TODAY all students across the region will return to their classrooms on a full-time basis. It will provide much relief to parents who have been forced to juggle supporting their children through remote learning with their own work commitments on and off for more than 18 months, and to teachers who have battled to provide their usual quality of education under the challenging remote conditions.

But the return to classrooms fulltime might present more conflicting emotions in our children who do not necessarily have the emotional maturity to deal with yet more upheaval to their lives.

Yes they will have more opportunity to connect with their peers, but we are taking them from what in most cases is the comfort and security of the family home and asking them to wear masks for a full school day.

We are also still in the midst of our worst Covid outbreak in Geelong in more than a year, with local schools among the most affected. Students face the very real possibility their school could temporarily close on a moment’s notice and the knowledge many of them still cannot be vaccinated as protection from the virus.

There is no doubt that the return to classrooms full-time is the most healthy situation for our children in the long-term. But the damage done from 18 months of constant uncertainty and upheaval might make that farewell as the school gate a little more anxious than in the past.

1797

Army inspector Andre Jacques Garnerin makes the first parachute descent, jumping from a balloon 1000m above Paris. The parachute is made of canvas 7m in diameter. 1860 Thomas Pattison, a deaf migrant from Scotland, opens the Deaf And Dumb Institution in Sydney, offering private lessons to children. 1917

The trans-Australian railway opens, with the first train leaving Port Augusta in SA for Kalgoorlie in WA. 1938

Inventor Chester Carlson gives the first public demonstration of photocopying in New York City. Some 20 companies reject his product before a non-profit firm agrees to back his idea for Xerox.

1962

The Cuban missile crisis grows as US president John F Kennedy declares a naval “quarantine” of Cuba after the discovery of Soviet missiles in Cuba. KGB master spy George Blake (right), 44, escapes from a London maximum security prison, Wormwood Scrubs, by sawing bars and flees to the Soviet Union. He was serving 42 years for spying. 2013 The parliament of the Australian Capital Territory passes the Marriage Equality (Same Sex) Act, the first Australian parliament to legalise same sex marriages. It is overruled in the High Court.

1966