Impacting mental health
Pupils’ and teachers’ anxieties about reopening schools seem to be ignored in the plans
ARGUABLY, the country has never before been in a collective mental health crisis, certainly not one of such intensity. Anxiety, panic, uncertainty, despair and fear have enveloped us all on multiple levels.
Perhaps the most intensely affected is education, where things are “falling apart and the centre cannot hold”.
One accepts that the ministry of Basic Education is complex, but what is difficult to accept is the apparent arrogance and lack of due consideration by the minister and her deputy for pupils, parents and their teachers as human beings with their own fears, worries and a sense of helplessness.
Recent media briefing sessions did little, if anything, to give recognition to these groups as people worth empathy, consideration and respect while each tries to come to terms with a whirlpool of emotions, demands, stresses and fears. In fact, they did the contrary.
Extracts of some of the interviews with pupils:
“2020 was the year I waited for since I entered the high school gates as a little girl. This year began on a high note. I had invested hard work, expecting good results, a glamorous matric farewell, saying goodbye and going into a career. I didn’t expect this mess.”
“To the minister: I am more panic-stricken now. I am a good student. But I am frightened to lose my life… The class of 2020 deserves some sort of comfort, understanding and therapy even before going to school.”
“This is an abnormal year. How can the minister want a normal curriculum and exam? What will happen to the symbols I was hoping for? I don’t have internet and, while absent, I struggled on my own.”
“I worry that the pressure and demand to prepare us for the final exams will become too much to bear. Also, I am afraid about my life and that of our teachers, my friends and family. While I try to keep my spirits up, I have many worries and anxieties.”
Teachers and parents are no less anxious, fearful and despondent, with one teacher reporting: “I feel guilty at what will happen now to pupils who I brought up from grade 10 to 12.”
While the minister is focused on the technicalities, the fears, worries, trepidations, anxieties and despair of the pupil and teacher – at the end of that almost cold and factual planning chain – seems forgotten. If the minister’s determination to get the academic year started is based on the notion that pupils will achieve and teachers perform within their potential, she is mistaken.
Learning and performance, even at the best of times, can be hindered by many factors. In this group, physical or mental disabilities or socio-economic struggles come to mind.
But mental health factors can be such a monumental “internal overload” that the capacity for learning and performance is eroded, and self-esteem and confidence go out the window.
Apart from the danger of becoming infected, our pupils have the dice loaded against them from an academic point of view.
Even before Covid-19 years, we had pupils, especially matrics, “come apart at the seams” under the stress and panic of tests and exams. Self-harm and suicide as “by-products” of mental health complications are, sadly, all too well known. If we add the stress of a compressed year; a curriculum that is not trimmed; an inordinately heavy teaching and learning programme; higher than usual worries over symbols; fear for life and an exam that is not appropriately adjusted to match the time lost, we have a powder keg attached to a lit fuse.
It would be foolhardy for the education ministry not to have therapeutic programmes in place to reach out to pupils and teachers before the academic programme starts.
Programmes focusing on trauma counselling, lending a sympathetic ear to pupils’ worries and fears, easing the burdens upon troubled shoulders and adjusting classroom pedagogy to compensate for their deep-seated anxieties and fears should be mandatory.
Teachers are not immune to anxieties and concerns, not only for themselves but also for their pupils’ well-being and achievement. By the matric year, teachers and their pupils have developed a bond based on mutual understanding and trust. The story that “Grade 12’s will have the whole school to themselves. Classes will be split and we will provide new teachers”, will not work.
If the mental health of our teachers is not given due consideration, we might see the beginning of an exodus.
Failure by the ministry to institute such proactive programmes should not dissuade schools from starting this without delay on their own. Schools should have pupil and educator support teams in place. This serves such a therapeutic purpose.
Making a “cold start” with curriculum teaching without such a comforting and therapeutic programme would be insensitive. For pupils it would be akin to trying to fill “empty mugs with facts”, hoping that miraculously deep understanding, appreciation and application of information would occur.
The lives, fate and future of our pupils and teachers are too precious to be trifled with.