#BTColumn – What the ‘New Rules’ really require

Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by this author are their own and do not represent the official position of the Barbados Today Inc.

This week, as I wrote my school’s Protocol for the Reopening of School, it reinforced the extent to which the rules have changed because of COVID.

Writing this document took me back to the little things that existed, without being written down, from the days when I attended school – a respect for each other’s personal space being the most prominent. This was taught and expected at home, and school merely had to emphasize it.

There was courtesy on stairwells and in corridors; we neither lent, borrowed nor shared our books and pencils. Bathroom breaks were not allowed during class and ‘accidents’ were rare (because we all know that these requests are often a means of escaping a subject, the teacher, a social situation or just evasion of the task). Hand washing was second nature to us, as was flushing the toilet with the seat down. Completing our work independently (and with a diligence to quality) was supervised by parents.

These boundaries and expectations empowered us as children and have now become critically important; they have slipped socially in the past 50 years to our collective detriment.

A detention was a shameful punishment; now, suspension is too often a common occurrence. Today, it has been mandated as a consequence of disobedience of the rules laid out for the safety of students in school.

There is little doubt in my mind that COVID has recalibrated society in almost every way, and teachers, students and parents must adapt quickly, without reservation or noncompliance.

Truancy and tardiness were not practiced, and the ‘van-culture’ was unheard of. We heard, ‘Explain yourself!’ only on rare occasions and even when very young, we lived by the Shakespearean motto, ‘Do unto others’.

There is little doubt that the strong, supportive and collaborative relationship between home and school, parents and teachers, that has deteriorated over the decades, now has to be actively reawakened. It now takes ‘a village’, not just to ‘raise a child’, but to ensure our communal survival.

I think the yin-yang principle, applied to the daily operations of schools within the COVID world, provides us with the opportunity to get back to the values and practices we have allowed to slip: personal responsibility, being our ‘brother’s keeper’ and, at the top of the list, the expectation that students drive their own learning.

Our classrooms have become too large and too many children have been ‘falling through the cracks’ with diminished attention and care. School Report Cards tell a parent nothing of who their child is and how their needs are being addressed. Teacher absenteeism is rife because the stress from teaching has become a pandemic in itself.

There used to be ‘career teachers’; now we have many who teach as stepping stones to something better once the opportunity arises. Few graduates see the teaching profession as a lifelong journey of personal growth and contribution to society. It simply does not pay well, administrative duties have become onerous and dealing with children’s negative behaviours (and parents who support them) threaten both personal sanity and safety.

Examinations, like the 11-Plus, have focused on repetition, rather than critical thinking, and have played a large part in labelling whole swaths of society based on the school attended at secondary level. Educationally, we have become complacent, reactive and unaccountable.

The status quo of teaching practice that exists, with the support of the ‘lies’ provided through statistics on a school’s academic results, has thankfully caught up with us.

There are no performance reviews of teachers and the quality of learning goes unmeasured, taking with it any expectation of accountability that drives improvement; there is little transparency. We provide teachers with the security of civil service appointments, yet do not measure their performance at any point in their tenure for life. Poor teaching or school leadership that is covertly acknowledged has been ignored, in many schools, for decades.

So, now we have to follow an abundance of rules set out by the Ministries of Health and Education. Most seem unfeasible, simply because schools are expected to control the practices of each student in a changed world.

If anything were to chase excellent, prospective candidates further away from the teaching profession, it would be this. Teachers upholding rules have often become the ‘bad cops’ and there have been too many instances of ‘wrong and strong’ parents taking their grievances to the media. Many genuine grievances have not been properly dealt with by the authorities.

Schools will find a way to operate safely; that is non negotiable. However, it is the impact on homes and changed practices in parenting that is the most worrisome because these will be expected, rather than inspected. For too long teachers and parents have not enjoyed a positive relationship; fingers have been pointed by one to the other. The thing is, when one finger points at the other party, three fingers point back at you!

What is clearly apparent is that drastic changes in Education must now happen as a matter of urgency, as do parenting practices.

It’s time we used COVID-19 to become an effective, unified team again.

Julia Hanschell can be contacted at smartstudying@gmail.com.