Those lovely people at the Daily Mail (Daily Heil) certainly think that we should:
There are one or two problems with this newspaper story. Well, there are dozens but I have to summarise to make this post readable. Let's start with the Mail's lying. The vast majority of teachers are against opening the schools at this time. Nobody thinks its a good idea. Everybody thinks its a terrible idea. The unions are doing merely what you would expect in trying to protect their members. The newspapers here heavily support our Conservative government and have seen their physical sales and advertising revenues collapse during the pandemic, so they are pro easing the lockdown.
As I've said many times, easing the lockdown before you have proper test-trace-isolate procedures puts you at risk of losing control of the virus. France has fewer cases than us and better (well... less inadequate) testing procedures and even they are having problems trying to open up.
Schools are a particular issue too. Even the limited re-opening which the government are bringing in will create massive virus spreading centres. The lower end of Primary school is due to be one of the first back. Yes, these young kids are very low risk in terms of dying but they are very high risk in terms of spreading the disease. I work as a primary school teacher myself and let me tell you that the zero chance of getting children between four and six years of age to social distance effectively. Anyone with any experience of a primary setting thinks that this is nuts, which it is.
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Not even a pandemic is sufficient to modernize the system into letting people at least choose between old-school frontal lessons and some potentially newer approach (pre-recorded video lessons, e-learning, et al).
I thought it was primarily an Italian problem, but it seems to be global. 😪
@Elessar I think its good exploring new ways of doing things. Big caveats though.
1) We are currently sending videos, online games and worksheets to the parents and the parents are good. None of them think its a good substitute for a classroom environment. 2) Kids are social creatures and are really bored given theu have been at home so long. 3) The kids i teach are six and seven so i really dont think a new approach can work with kids that young. Even at an older age, the kids just get apathetic when the novelty wears off. 4) My school is against using Zoom calls due to safeguarding issues. However, even if you had an integrated system like Google Chromebooks have where the work is synergised with the powerpoint and the teacher has control, this would not be as good. Im moderately tech savvy for a teacher but i dont think i could teach a whole class a good lesson using this method. A group of six would work ok but no more. You need to look around a classroom, not a screen. The kids need partner talk time.
I think if they do move away from the classroom method, it would be a costcutting method that weakens education. My experience of what you say has convinced me of that.
@Burnley123 Oh I know that it'd be harder if not impossible to implement for kids, but actually what I'm suggesting could be applied to universities and high/mid school at least, i.e. students that are 14 and older (or even 11 and older), who could definitely benefit from a learn from home approach, and not only during this pandemic, and who wouldn't face as many difficulties as children nor require constant physical supervision.
Many of the spaces currently reserved to high school could be reallocated for kids, also potentially solving or at the very least compensating the other big problem that is overcrowded classrooms, and that at least over here existed for long before this pandemic.
The real reason why this doesn't happen IMO is that if students can choose to learn from home a lot of them won't spend anymore in public transportation, rents, eating out, and all those businesses that survive primarily thanks to them. And the same is true also for workers from home, in fact many politicians (in particular local administrators in big cities like Milan) are doing their best to oppose it and push for "re-entering workplaces in safety".
