Officially, about 2,000 teachers have died of Covid-19. Think about that.
Let us assume that it took four years to train each of them, the basic duration of an education degree (BED) or a three-year general Bachelor’s degree, with an additional year of teacher training (PGCE). Older teachers might hold a certificate of two or three years, but consider that washed out by the many hours of in-service teacher training during the course of a career. So four years it is, and for 2,000 teachers that means these deaths count as 8,000 years of teacher training lost in one year because of the pandemic. For an education planner, that staggering loss of teaching expertise is a disaster; for the families of the deceased, the loss is an unfathomable tragedy. Should schools reopen as scheduled?
In a heart-rending story first reported by the Los Angeles Times, children were found apologising to their elders who were dying in hospital beds. The youngsters brought the virus home. Last time I wrote about a friend who had heart-transplant surgery and whose wife was an active teacher. Well, he is now ashes. But our department of basic education is steaming ahead to reopen schools on January 25, regardless of the human toll.
When I first argued for keeping schools closed it was because of a lack of knowledge about a little-known virus and how it would affect schools and communities. We now know a lot more about the coronavirus that can and should inform school reopening decisions. While there was some doubt last year, it is now clear that infected children can and do carry the virus; a Harvard Medical School report, citing recent studies, says “infected children had as much, or more, coronavirus in their upper respiratory tracts as infected adults”. And while children still experience less illness or severe symptoms compared with adults, we need to talk about that — the adult teachers in the classroom affected by pupils there.
Since January 5, schools in the UK have been closed, for good reasons. Even in a well-resourced environment in a wealthy country, there were certain hard facts to deal with, such as this one: you simply cannot enforce social distancing in schools. After a few days of compliance, children do what children do anywhere in the world — they play, they touch, they talk and, in the process, they spread the virus among themselves and to others. In the middle of this otherwise beautiful cacophony is the teacher talking masks, sanitation, distancing and, of course, science, maths and languages.
The case for not yet reopening schools in SA is much stronger than in the UK — we have more pupils per school and classroom, we have fewer resources to maintain high levels of mitigation and now we have fewer live teachers to manage the children. It is a difficult decision, especially for working parents and for children bored at home, but is this heavy loss of life worth it?
When I scroll down my Facebook page every day there is another picture of a smiling teacher who has been lost to Covid. They are men and women, older, but also some younger teachers. The tributes to these deceased colleagues are heart-rending. They loved their children. They were passionate about their profession. They went beyond the call of duty. When I think of a teacher’s death, I imagine the loss of a library, someone with so much knowledge about their subject, about pedagogy (how to teach), about children and their learning, and about assessment and classroom management. Unlike a physical library, a deceased teacher takes her library of knowledge to the grave.
Our schools must reopen, but not at lockdown level 3 while a more infectious strain of the virus stalks our communities. It takes years to train a competent teacher and even more years to learn and perfect their craft through the daily experience of teaching. As with every life, the life of a teacher must be protected at all costs.
Some argue that the question is not whether we should reopen schools, but how to do that safely. People who make such glib remarks are not paying attention. I still see schoolchildren in rural areas wading through water or balancing on rope to cross a raging river. Don’t tell me this government prioritises the safety of our children or teachers. It does not. The primary obsession of the department of basic education is to restore lost time and give the semblance of order to a school system still reeling from the matric cheating scandal and the delayed marking that has already upended the facade of orderliness.
