Give the young back the freedom to live
Their risk of falling victim to the infection is tiny, but they are bearing the brunt of the costs of lockdown
‘They f--- you up, your Mum and Dad. They may not mean to but they do / They fill you with the faults they had / And add some extra, just for you”, wrote Philip Larkin in the rebellious Seventies. Were Larkin composing in the time of corona, he might add swathes of the adult world to his list of offenders.
Education unions are doggedly resisting plans to reopen schools, and though some teachers have kept their charges busy and informed under lockdown, this cannot be said of all. The Sutton Trust reports that two thirds of children have not received any online lessons, with the neediest left floundering. While some primary school pupils returned to school this week – albeit to playground temperature checks and other sinister protocols – millions of under-18s are still sitting listlessly at home. This is a crisis to which the Government should be applying the same moral urgency it did to expanding NHS capacity or keeping food supply chains running. In the face of resistance, however, it is merely backing down on its promise to have all primary children back by the beginning of July.
Students taking up their university places this year, meanwhile, are likely to be greeted by a “virtual” freshers’ week, featuring online lectures and one-way systems across campus. Save for Hemingway’s “tragedy in six words”: “For sale, baby shoes, never worn”, can there be a more mournful phrase than “virtual freshers’ week”?
It gets worse. Under plans drawn up by vice-chancellors, students could be grouped into “bubbles” to live and study together in a bid to limit transmission on campus. Beyond the social lottery this entails (imagine being paired with a bunch of rotters and being barred from meeting anyone else), social distancing neatly excises much that makes university worthwhile. Student life experienced at two metres’ distance, or through a screen, is like trying to travel the world via a Lonely Planet guide. Many will now defer their entry, but intensified competition as two years apply at once inevitably means that students will miss out on top places they would have secured under normal circumstances.
The irony is that these miserablist schemes are unnecessary. As everyone in government and higher education knows, for the young, the virus’s risks are non-existent – certainly compared with the risks of serious mental health problems due to atomised living, being forced into protective bubbles at university and treated like diseased creatures at school. Universities should of course protect the minority of staff and students in “high-risk” groups, but their failure to demand normality for the rest is a betrayal of their pastoral duties. Some authorities have even refused to offer refunds or reduced fees, arguing that students are receiving the “same” service – a level of sophistry that only a professional academic could achieve.
Facing adversity is characterbuilding, allegedly, and the pandemic offers plenty of that. Yet our lockeddown young lack even the freedom to venture out into the world and make mistakes. Those of us in our mid-tolate 20s may moan about postponed weddings and interrupted social lives, but most of us have had some fun, know who our friends are and have gained at least a foothold in our careers. The younger crop have barely begun the trial and error process of life. Besides the social penalty, their economic situation is comparatively dire; new starters are more likely to be furloughed – some will find they have no job to return to. Many firms are paring back their graduate schemes, and apprenticeship recruitment has already taken a hit.
The authorities’ negligence in fighting for the young on multiple fronts is a scandal which runs against the proper order of things. It took philosophers and reformers centuries to convince society to view children as independent moral beings, deserving of rights, not merely as the property of their parents. Yet in their neglect, craven authorities and teaching unions are echoing a pre-victorian view of the young as inherently less valuable than the rest of the population. Between the scandalous lack of urgency on school reopenings, universities’ feeble efforts to fight for their students, and the Government’s own political cowardice, we are conspiring to make a whole generation miserable.