Kunal Chakravarty
Director - Communications & Fundraising
AFAL
"What's the point?"
My 9-year-old looked me dead in the eye as I asked if she was ready to go back to school.
Truth be told, I didn't have a perfect answer for her.
She will be ending her 4th grade and has the usual ho-hum 'must have' educational subjects.
Yep, we've all been there. We've all been that 9-year-old who doesn't like school.
The difference, though – this is a new generation – the Covid generation.
While our daughter may see no point in school for the usual teenage reasons or the fact she is just recovering from Covid, she was also referring to the fact that the education system as we know it has changed forever.
She has been in primary school for four years, and she has had approximately two years plus that was uninterrupted by Covid, and that's probably being generous.
I remember the first wave of Covid well, and it was just after her 8th birthday.
And just like that, our daughter's school years were changed forever.
Now, before anyone goes and rant at me for hating on home learning, let me make one thing clear: teachers worked amazingly hard in an unprecedented situation. Yes, teachers worked hard. Absolutely, and I do not question it for a second.
Students, however, did not. Well, at least not in the traditional sense.
Yes, our daughter did (most) of her work, but I think we all know it's not as much as she would have done if she was in class.
Initially, we started freaking out – what can we teach her? Then we let her introduce herself. And no, I don't mean her schoolwork – her teachers did that, obviously – I mean in the extra hours of the day now she had more freedom.
She came out of her bedroom one day and calmly said, "I'm going to bake."
Unbeknown to us, she had been teaching herself about baking. It wasn't a school assignment, and no one had asked her to, and she just did it.
And she didn't just look at the traditional form of learning. She was all over everything – yet she was learning about it.
And while we loved her enthusiasm, I did play the Dad card and say: "That's great, but what will do you that for a job as well?"
(Some days, I seriously wonder how we birthed this child. At 9, all I wanted was some superhero toys.)
The truth is, not only has she not fallen behind after two years of home learning; she's learnt more life skills to set herself up.
If anything, I'd say by seeing her is a household be run day-in-day-out, where she is spending quality time with family, by having spare time just to be herself and live her own life – this generation isn't behind at all. They're ahead
So there I was, asking my daughter about school and its reopening as the consent mail reached the inbox, trying to justify the importance of going back when she answered himself: "School's only good because I get to see my friends."
While she might have her future planned out, she has missed one thing over the last two years – socialising.
Even with social media, everyone on their phones, even with 5000 apps making people contactable 24/7, our kids have missed school for one reason.
Their friends.
And while we all sat there and struggled to understand how the education system will go in the way we all know – after the system itself has proven that the education part can be done remotely – we agreed that the one thing this generation has missed is their mates.
For two years, friendships have been lived through screens, texts and FaceTime.
Laughing. Hugging. Smiling. Simple gestures every person took for granted have been stolen from a generation of kids who are discovering themselves, discovering the world around them and finding where they fit in.
As we head into a new academic year soon, my view on traditional education may have changed but my hope for kids to be able to bask in the simple pleasures of life remains the same.
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