Now that face-to-face classes are back, a lot of things pose a real challenge not just to learners but also to school administrators, teachers, and parents. It will surely be a rough journey, a very jerky and uncomfortable one that we all need to navigate and cross no matter what.
Last Tuesday (Aug 23), my daughter (who teaches in one of the Catholic schools here in Dumaguete) came home with an anecdote involving one of the children in school. One of the kids (whom she described as a little bit overweight) fell off the staircase as she was going down the stairway from one of her classes.
As she was telling me, there were several speculations at first as to why the kid tumbled down the stairs but, in the end, it was found out that she “blacked out” for a few seconds. In ordinary parlance, she fell asleep.
My initial reaction or conclusion was that “falling asleep” while going down the stairs is a “consequence” of the more than two years of not going to a physical school due to the pandemic.
The way I see it, young learners (grade schoolers, high school, and college students) have been so used to a “relaxed” routine since they just stayed at home, and even when they are having their classes online, they can do whatever they like (slouch on the couch, eat, have the TV on, checking on their FB accounts all the time). Sometimes, they just have their laptop/desktop monitors on (as if they’re attending the class) but they are not there. That’s how easy it was with the online classes. They have become so accustomed to it that going to a “physical school” now takes so much effort and a lot of adjustments.
But with the face-to-face classes back, it wouldn’t be just the relaxed routine that will have to be disrupted. The learners’ intellect will need to be “re-calibrated” as well. I’ve noticed when talking to young people nowadays, for example, they don’t know the correct spelling of certain words, and don’t know the English equivalent of some Cebuano terminologies (even when these are very simple ones).
One issue that needs to be faced is the learning crisis we have right now. The World Bank said that learning poverty (the share of 10-year-olds who cannot read or understand a simple written text) hit a new high of 91 percent last June. This percentage is one of the highest in the East Asia and Pacific region, according to the WB.
DepEd further says that “the issue of learning poverty has been a dilemma of the country for years and the department is proactively dealing with it for the long term.”
And of course, there is the problem of poverty and hunger. Hunger affects learning, that is a fact. Because of the poor economic situations of many families (not just in big cities but also here in Dumaguete), many of our learners go to school unprepared and unmotivated because they are hungry.
Based on studies and reports, since 2001, one out of three five-year-olds are undersized or too short for their age. They have poor cognitive abilities. They can’t comprehend what is being taught because they already have these poor conditions.
This is one of the biggest reasons why many of our 10-year-olds cannot read. And since reading is a gateway for learning as the child progresses in his life, this inability to read limits opportunities for further learning. When a child is constrained to learn further, the child’s chances of a better life are also limited, if not nil.
This journey that we are now traversing will need additional effort and energy not just from DepEd, from the private academic institutions, not just from the government, and the church, but also parents and guardians. It is going to be a very rough ride for all of us, after all, the pandemic is still here.
But as the African proverb states, “it takes a village to educate a child.” So, for the sake of the future generation, let us all participate.
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Author’s email: legis616821@gmail.com
