To hell with Covid! Children MUST go to school
THIS past few months has been an emotional roller-coaster ride for Leaving Cert students.
I have every sympathy with them, caught up in a maelstrom of infighting as politicians, exam regulators and teachers decide on their future.
But while I don’t doubt the distress caused and their anxiety about their future prospects, this pales into insignificance when compared with the mental health implications of the coronavirus pandemic for hundreds of thousands of younger children.
As ever, it is disadvantaged youngsters suffering most, those who haven’t had access to online lessons or home-schooling for almost six months.
Since schools closed down, their educational and social development was effectively put on hold. For many without the stability of school, there was no structure to their day, and by now they will have lost the habit of learning and the self-discipline demanded by being part of a school community.
And of course they will have suffered fear and anxiety because of what they have heard or read about the pandemic.
Many will be living in chaotic homes without gardens or a park nearby, and have been cooped up for weeks with siblings and parents who find it hard to cope.
At best, their environment will be unstimulating; at worst, violent or have exposed them to drink and substance abuse.
Dr Gavin Morgan, an educational psychologist, has warned of the devastating impact of limited social interaction on children’s development.
‘We know how important play is for children’s development,’ he said. ‘If they can’t play with their friends, their mental health is going to suffer.
‘Children may have developed secure attachment with their teachers and they have been denied access to these figures.’
A social worker I spoke to this week who has just resumed home visits said some of the children she sees have gone ‘feral’.
Experts who call this a ‘social crisis in the making’ are not underestimating the problem.
Which is why we now need our schools to open over teh next two weeks as planned.
Anything other than this is not acceptable; instead it would be the brazen politicisation of a crisis, in which children very definitely aren’t being put first.
We cannot be complacent, of course, but the health risks are minimal.
Children seem to have robust resistance to this strain of the coronavirus. And there are no cases worldwide in which a child has passed the virus to a teacher.
So I say to hell with Covid-19. If children don’t go back to school — full time, not part-time — we risk condemning an entire generation to educational oblivion, blighting their life prospects.
And there is another aspect to this crisis. The summer school holidays are a distant memory for me — but a fond one.
I remember endless days of tramping around, exploring with friends, having water fights in the garden and eating strawberries until I felt sick.
SIX long weeks of holiday gave us time to play and to
be children. It would take a good few weeks of being back at school before we could shake off that summer feeling and get back into the swing of things in class.
Teachers know children return after the summer holiday at an educational level below where they were before the break — a phenomenon termed ‘educational regression’.
My mum, who was a special needs teacher, helped set up a summer school for children so those from disadvantaged backgrounds wouldn’t fall too far behind.
And on the paediatric wards where I’ve worked, we made sure that even very unwell children received regular lessons. We knew missing classes for a few months would have a lasting impact.
Thanks to the pandemic, many children haven’t had a real summer holiday or enjoyed the developmental benefits it brings. Instead, they’ve endured an extension of lockdown (albeit with fewer restrictions over time).
But what they will have experienced is educational regression.
I’ve been impressed by Micheal Martin’s insistence that schools must be open by August 31 and his view that it is an essential part of life for our children to go to their classes.
He recognises that the gap between rich and poor in educational attainment has widened since March, and we risk losing progress made in social mobility.
I couldn’t care less about a minister’s career or the politics surrounding this at the minute. But, regardless of how they get their, our children need to go to school for the sake of their futures. We cannot allow the futures of the poorest children in Ireland to be sacrificed on the altar of politics in this way.