COVID-19 & Learning: Not having face-to-face classes is a bad idea. Here's why.

 Author: S. Gordon-Jeffery

Image courtesy of 123 photos

It's a disaster I tell you! An utter disaster and a disgrace how our children are being treated. On the first two days which were to be the beginning of classes many students received very little or no instruction from teachers.

No learning on no movement days  

Monday and Tuesday (September 6 and 7) were "no movement days" where everyone, except for specially exempt personnel, had to be locked down in their houses. These exempted persons could move about and conduct business because they are considered essential workers.

 Strangely enough, even with the starting of the academic year, the government did not add teachers and principals to the specially exempted list.  Meanwhile, aggressive advertising urging the public to go to open vaccination sites and get their COVID vaccines were all over social media and mainstream media networks. On the most important day for our children there was no information from the Ministry of Education as to when in-person learning would resume for students 12 years or older. Neither was there info on if children under 12 years old could attend traditional school, since even though there is no vaccine for them, they still need to learn. It would therefore seem that one could freely walk or drive to a vaccination site to get the jab, but to go to your child's school to pick up his/her package for the new school year would get you into trouble with the law. An oversight some persons would say is most revealing of what the government's priorities are at this time.

School for some, not for all

So what happened on Monday and Tuesday? Online classes were kept but not every student benefited from them. Listening to TVJ's Prime Time News, I could hear the frustration from both the parents and their children. For many who live outside of Kingston, St. Andrew and St. Catherine, internet service is choppy at best and nonexistent in a worst case scenario. 

Several parents complained that the internet chips in and chips out, and it takes a while for pages to load. Some parents buy mobile data for their children because cable internet is too expensive or not available in their area, but not even mobile data is reliable. I could hear the feeling of helplessness in the parents' voices. Bear in mind, to be constantly buying the phone credit to put on a 5 or 7 day data plan is also challenge on the pockets of the parents who already can't afford it. They have tried all? What more can they do?

Whatsapp Group was last year's solution and it didn't work

Last year some teachers/principals engaged their parents and students via Whatsapp groups but nothing beats hands-on instructions. True, the teacher can send the work through Whatsapp but parents have complained that all some teachers do is send the lessons to Whatsapp with no instruction or direction to help the parents monitor the child's work. Parents complained that they don't understand the work and the teachers were sometimes inaccessible for clarification.

Teachers on the other hand complained that they would see a child maybe once or twice per week for class. Some children in the beginning were fully engaged --receiving Whatsapp lessons and sending their work, but as the pandemic raged on they became inconsistent and quite a few disappeared.

No wonder the teachers are alarmed. The longer this online learning continues, the less engaged the children become, and the more the parents find alternative things for their kids to do, such as what I mentioned in my previous article that Dr. Chevannes and a high school teacher observed. Have you read my first article on covid-19 and online learning? No? Well, mek sure yuh read it after yuh finish read this one. Seet here. 

Are we supposed to go back to a method that did not work? 

No sah! Dat nuh mek nuh sense!

Data plan

Majority of Jamaicans have no wifi at home. We use data plans, whether Flow or Digicel, we top-up and then we browse. 

For the child to get lessons online whether from Whatsapp or Zoom top-up affi gwaan. 

A 7-day plan costs about $1000. Imagine having to buy that every week an' yuh kno yuh nuh have it! That's $4,000 a single mothah wud affi find each month!  An' rememba wid this whul' heep a lock down weh a cut inna har pay, 'ow she fi afford fi buy food much less di credit? 

$1000 is the cost I pay to put on a 7-day plan on my mobile device. I live in Kingston, I am aware of the fact that credit costs much more to purchase the deeper rural you live. 

Shopkeepah nah guh seh hush tek it fi free or fi a cheapah price becaaz it depenz on 'ow far dem affi travel fi reach di wholesale inna di town fi buy it an' cyarri it back home.

Also, bear in mind that when a shopkeeper from the country area goes into the town of their parish they buy up supplies to last them a week or more. 

If di credit dem buy fi sell back dun (runs out) before dem markit day, dat affi guh stay till wen dem ready fi guh again, no baddi nah guh way a town fi phone cyaad!

No devices

When some of the teachers saw they weren't reaching the kids, they went above and beyond the call of duty to prepare the lessons, print them and then trek into some deep rural communities to meet their students so that they could give them the school work. Then they would arrange to pick up the work, mark them and give it back to them, ensuring they drop off more work for them to do. 

Many teachers in these rural communities have no laptops of their own and had to also provide printed material out of their own pockets. I think it is highly unfair to expect the teachers to go through all of that again. It is the teacher's job to instruct their pupils but they are being frustrated in their purpose.

And what about the children? Many still don't own a decent device!

Kids who manage to do well at online learning are fortunate to have a designated space assigned to them for their classes and their own designated device, but that is not the majority. Not every child has a proper device to use. All smartphones are not equal. You can hardly do anything with a cheap phone or tablet. You use them a couple times, they burn out, I am speaking from experience. That is the reality. Also, if it is necessary to download work, not all devices have the memory space required for that workload. There have been contributions made by corporate Jamaica and the government to get tablets into the hands of children, but we all know not every child received one. 

 The Education ministry's plan of continued online learning does not take into account the stretched mental and financial resources of schools and teachers, nor the frustration, anxiety or limited resources of parents and their children.

Not having face-to-face is a bad idea.

Still, the ministry cannot account for the missing 120,000 students who have dropped out of the school system and are doing something else. We do not yet know the repercussions these young people leaving will have on the society, but it may not be good. 

The Ministry of Labour and Social Security already anticipates that children who drop out of school will have limited socioeconomic prospects, which negatively impacts the overall productivity levels of the nation (Thomas, 2021). I spoke to this in more detail in my previous post here.

By continuing this bad idea, yes, it is a bad idea, the Ministry of Education is jeopardizing your child's future. There are already signs that this school year will be even worse.

Drop in enrollment

According to an article from the Jamaica Gleaner, principals are seeing a sharp decline in the number of students enrolled in their schools. The principal of Beulah All Age School noted with alarm that from a steady enrollment of 52 grade 1 students, the number has fallen to 24 children. Another principal noted there was "a 40 percent decline in new enrollment" (Brown, 2021). 

Both principals of these two Clarendon schools were hoping that face-to-face classes would begin so that they could get the kids back into a normal and structured environment but that has not happened. Based on what I have been hearing on the news the experience of these principals is not unique. It seems quite a few kids have not been enrolled by their parents.

Online classes didn't work last year as the principal of the Howells Content Early Childhood Development Centre revealed:

"The online class for the two- to six-year-old students was a challenge. To get their attention and work with them online was not working out last year." 

(Brown, 2021)

Many parents bought books last year for their children but because of the closure of schools due to COVID-19, many are hesitant to spend the money again until they are certain face-to-face classes will begin. Since the Education ministry has not indicated and seems to not know when that will be, parents are in a wait and see mode. 

Let's reason this out folks: 

Could it be that parents, seeing the sharp rise in cases from July already came to the conclusion before the Ministry announced it, that schools would not go back to face-to-face classes for now and they just didn't bother to register their children?

Could it also be that parents feel its better to buy food and other provisions than waste it on buying books the kids may never use?

They may be saying to themselves --online classes are pure frustration so why even bother! Some parents will now have to be making the choice between food on the table or their kids' education. Do we as a society really want this? 

In my community children are pretty much locked inside their homes but you do have the occasional child who gets sent to the shop or is sent to buy food or drop off an item. 

Homeschooled

Some parents bought up books and paid the school fee and are now angry that the government seems to be imposing a COVID-19 vaccination mandate on their children. I have heard parents flatly refuse to get their child vaccinated and insisted that if it was necessary for them to homeschool their kids themselves, that was what they would do. 

Parents can teach their children many things and I do not doubt some would do a good job of explaining algebra or subject and verb agreement, but not every parent has the time, patience or training to teach the prescribed curriculum.

Teaching environment 

We still need teachers and we need them to be allowed to do what they are trained to do --teach, but, teach in an environment that is suited for imparting instruction and fostering effective learning. An environment that is created for the purpose of learning, not in the child's bedroom or in the kitchen or in the living-room where there is the distraction of a turned on TV. Given the circumstances our children face, online learning was and is a very bad idea.

It is clear that something must be done to rescue our kids' futures. The Education ministry has put forth their plan, a plan that has not worked and is not working. Many parents resent the government's stance of 65% vaccination rate in schools because they feel they are being held at ransom and their children's future is the cost. The contentious debates concerning the COVID-19 vaccine has muddied the waters of public opinion and many people are skeptical of their (vaccines) safety and efficacy. Right now any kind of mandate for these vaccines would be unwise. The 65% in schools rate may never be achieved or it could be overtime, but right now children need the opportunity to learn.

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References

1. Thomas, D. 'Assessing Education and Productivity', Ministry of Labour and Social Security, PDF. Retrieved from Assessing_Education_and_Productivity_Article_David-Thomas-v5.pdf
2. Brown, O. (2021, September 6). 'The poor kids were lost': As enrolment lags, principals wary COVID learning woes will persist, Jamaica Gleaner, https://jamaica-gleaner.com/article/lead-stories/20210906/poor-kids-were-lost