Long before we can even begin to determine the extent of the likely overall toll of the coronavirus – in terms of deaths, possible longer-term illnesses, social and economic dislocation, changes in our socio-cultural behaviour, how long the malady will remain with us and the longer term adjustments we might have to make in terms of the way in which we live our lives – we are going to have to – both as a global community and as individual societies – find short-term responses to some of the immediate challenges that are already here with us. As with every challenge that seriously threatens the wellbeing of people it is the poor that are usually most stretched to muster adequate responses.
We are told that social distancing is desirable and that the wearing of masks could also help to reduce the spread of the coronavirus. The downside of this, of course, is that social distancing, masks and the like, radically alter our ability to communicate in accustomed ways, a facility that should not be taken for granted. To put it differently, whether the features of social distancing and the like are not likely to attach themselves permanently to our behavioural culture (a kind of ‘lessons learnt’ mindset) long after the virus has come and gone remains an unknown quantity.
So that in the period ahead the discourses on coronavirus are likely to shift from issues like casualties and cures to longer-term imponderables that have to do with its broader impact on the way we live and whether or not we will learn from the experience of the virus and apply what we learn to the way we live, tomorrow.
One lesson (and we can only address it briefly here) is this. However much we (as an international community) seek to persuade ourselves about the ‘leaps and bounds’ that our civilization has made in terms of social and economic progress, we are periodically reminded by nature and by ‘freaks’ thereof, that the unknown, the imponderable, is always at least a few steps ahead of us. It tells that as a civilization, we must be mindful of getting ahead of ourselves.
That point, however, belongs very much in the realm of the more global discourse on coronavirus. In the period ahead we in Guyana are preoccupied with the mundane things that have been dislocated by the virus…like education. The gradual re-opening of schools in some countries suggest that there are parts of the world in which governments are prepared to guardedly ‘force’ the issue in order to get children back into school. It is an important step though one might add that there is always the risk of unforeseeable backlash. These ‘early’ school re-openings, rather than being reflective of a response to certainties regarding safety, bear a closer resemblance to calculated risks, a ‘pushing of the envelope,’ if you will. The re-opening of schools in South Korea, for example, should not be allowed to help set a timeline for us in Guyana. Each country must undertake its own risk assessment and make its own informed decisions. Guyana, insofar as we can tell, still remains the proverbial ‘country mile’ away from re-starting in-school tuition across the country.
The path to arriving at the re-opening point and going forward, once we get there, is strewn with taxing challenges. There is the added concern as to the state that our schools are likely to be in having remained untenanted for what is likely to turn out to be several months, at the least. The reality is that our education has been (in more ways than one) caught entirely flat-footed by the virus. Routine teaching and learning, across the board, has been halted in its tracks and there is nothing even remotely resembling an adequate stop-gap arrangement that can be pressed into service in the emergency. That tells us that beyond the coronavirus we are going to have to do some serious re-thinking and re-building. The education sector, accordingly, will require a cadre of strong, determined, innovative and talented leaders in the education sector if those re-thinking and re-building processes are to happen.
We are told that the University of Guyana has a limited ‘virtual’ teaching/learning regime in place. That, one expects, will have its limitations. It is reportedly not working well for some students and that is not altogether surprising. One would expect that what would have been a sudden, even radical adjustment in the teaching/learning process, has, in some instances, been sufficiently demanding as to, in some instances, cause the option of ‘leave of absence’ from UG to arise. Others, of course would have opted to grin and bear it, a choice that has its own demanding implications.
In the instance of UG there is at least some sort of structured (though far from perfect) option in place. No such structured option is in place at the lower rungs of the education ladder. On those lower rungs, we are told that there are pockets of ‘virtual’ classes ongoing at some levels. These, however, appear to be ad hoc and do not fall under either the control or the guidance of the Ministry of Education in the manner that the conventional system does. Moreover, from all that we have learnt, these pockets of virtual classes are ‘powered’ largely by a system of self-help initiated by individual teachers (or perhaps small groups of teachers), parents and children. One might add that in the absence of the technological tools necessary to participate in virtual tuition, many students (and, presumably, these must comprise at least a large minority) are excluded.
For the state-run education system, the longer conventional tuition remains in its present ‘down time’ condition, the greater the effort that will be required to put it back together again. It is not, for example, far-fetched to suggest that the longer the enforced school break persists, the greater the likelihood that some children may drop out of school altogether and a good many others may have lost interest to the extent that they may have to benefit from remedial help.
The challenge does not end there. Since the forced closure of primary and secondary schools several weeks ago some important examination cycles have come and gone. What to do about the current Grade Six children, for example, in terms of managing their movement into the secondary system is still, it seems, a matter to be conclusively determined in what is now the absence of examination-related criteria for the placement of children in secondary schools. If this may not amount to an insurmountable problem it is certainly one which, for all sorts of reasons, will have to be dealt with carefully. Needless to say, given all that we already know about the challenges associated with delivering education to non-coastal and interior communities there is hardly need to speculate on the impact that the coronavirus-related dislocation is having on delivering education to children in those communities in any way, shape or form at this time.
Even in the instance of UG we are learning of ‘technology’-related constraints that are limiting student access to virtual tuition so that it is difficult to accurately assess the extent of the impact that all this is having on UG’s efforts to remain as close as possible to a condition of normalcy. Here, it is not a question of seeking to discourage the university in circumstances where it must have taken some measure of effort to create the system that it has. It is simply a matter of facing facts.
