The confusion continues

By Rhona Canoy .

SO… As we enter into the month of June, the discussion about school and what will happen continues to bubble and simmer. I feel for the parents and students who are lost. But the mindset and the difficulty in trying to adjust it cannot be denied. Yet we all forget that it’s not just school that is confusing.

After having numerous discussions with both parents and people in the academe, I wish there were more insights I could offer but there aren’t. In spite of the fact that our family is involved in education, we are just as flummoxed as everyone else. Granted, there is the aspect of what to do about these institutions which we have been behind for more than 40 years. Survival of the people who depend on the school for their income weighs heavily on our minds. After all, we ourselves are dependent on the schools as well.

My salary is paid by the school and it worries me that I have been without pay for a few months now. What little I have put away is being devoured by the necessity of living. But more important is the distress that we don’t really know what to do. We are entering a new frontier with regard to education. The safety issues which surround us all are a big concern. Let me try to straddle both sides of this issue and maybe give our parents something to consider.

The compulsion to worry about what happens to their children during this time adds to mental distress. For reasons which I suppose stem from habit, many parents are focusing their thoughts on how their children are going to keep schooling. All this talk about online and distance learning is a new paradigm that hasn’t yet sunk in, and we know nothing about it. The reason I think that many are lost is because they are trying to imagine how their old concept of school is going to be applied to this “new normal.”

One thing must be made clear. It’s not going to be like physical schooling. The idea that many have of transferring the classes online remains the same. People picture that it’s going to be the same lectures, teacher talking, students participating, quizzes, tests, recitation except all happening on the internet–no, it’s not. It can’t be. There will be limited time online because we have to offset computer fatigue. No matter how many hours some of your children may spend on the computer indulging their gaming habits and addictions, learning online can only be limited to about two hours a day.

Computer fatigue (I prefer to call it that) limits how much learning and virtual interaction anyone can handle when it comes to learning. How a teacher handles class must be adjusted to this. Strategies will change, expectations of what students do will change, how learning is assessed will change. Everyone must realize that this is new for the teachers and the schools as well. There will be frustration. That must be expected because in this situation everyone is learning.

Parents who have not really paid that much attention to their children’s schooling must, by force, be more actively engaged. Maybe not in the lessons themselves but in helping their children acquire the necessary self-discipline. To attend virtual class on time, to do their reading and other learning activities themselves, to be organized and prepared for the next class meeting, and I’m sure much more will surface as time goes on. There will no longer be as much homework time at night because kids don’t have to wait to get home before they do their own work. Mom and Dad have to be aware of this and create a structure for the kids.

The idea that just because they’re home, they can be more lenient must be rejected. There will be structured school time which cannot and must not be disrupted. This will actually be more difficult for the children than for the parents. Taking into account that it isn’t the student’s habit to be self-sufficient, kids who have been accustomed to the old traditional ways will have difficulty adjusting and must be supported mentally and emotionally as they transition.

For parents who depended on tutors in the past, this too may have to change. For the longest time, I have opposed the idea of tutoring because it doesn’t really accomplish as much as we would like to believe. It took away a lot of the child’s capacity to learn on their own. It took away the capacity of the child to make mistakes and then to learn from or overcome them. Because we have been so grades driven, we gave away too much for our children all in pursuit of the almighty numbers. And now they must pay the price.

For those of us who run schools, this is a new experience too. We don’t know how this is going to work out. We can only make an effort to be as prepared as we can be. But we are going to make mistakes. Our teachers are going to need strategic support to be effective. They’re going to stumble too. The only way that this education project is going to have even a glimmer of success is for everyone to be part of the effort.

DepEd, most of all, is struggling. After a century of an educational system that hasn’t really evolved, this must be painful. No matter how they are making a heroic effort to appear in control, I don’t think they are. For all of us, we are still in the theory part of this experiment. We are formulating ideas and hypotheses which still need to be tested. We will not know what works and what doesn’t. And we will only learn how to correct our mistakes when they have been made.

It sounds dire, and in a way it is. Very few people and agencies want to discuss the option of just letting our kids stop schooling for a year. That’s a viable option, actually. This new learning paradigm is just as new as the first year when the senior high school program was implemented. For those two years, DepEd kept making changes and adjustments, at the expense of our students. They’re going to do the same now. Actually even more so, if you ask me because this experiment is all-encompassing. Now it includes even colleges and universities.

If my daughter was still in school, I would seriously consider making her sit out the year. But that’s just me. I would, however, keep her academically occupied (except the math part because, well… math!) and make sure that she would be exposed and participate in as many real-life activities and problems as we would have to face.

Oh, and that’s another thing. Parents have this great opportunity to open up their communication lines to their kids. But many haven’t done so. Our kids need to know more than just about the virus and how it kills. Our kids need to be part of the economic conversation. They need to know that the family is struggling to keep food on the table. They need to know that they are part of the combined effort to survive. And most of all they need to know that they can contribute ideas and efforts.

We also need to hear about our children’s fears in this strange new world. They need to know our fears as well. In trying to protect our kids from the truth, we may expose them to our frustrations and fears instead without giving them any way of understanding these negative feelings. It is not right for us to be yelling at them for running around when actually we are worried because our rice supply is running low and we’re not sure if we can get some more.

Many couples fight because that’s how the uncertainty manifests itself. The fights will be about the most inconsequential things because we don’t want to talk about the scary realities. And our kids will have the front row seats to these fights. They will be affected deeply, whether we think about it or not. This is the time to increase and improve our self-awareness. For so long we have been taught to be affected by the problems that slam into our lives without learning how to handle them and to find solutions, no matter how temporary.

And the one thing no one wants to say out loud or face–the possibility of getting sick and dying. That’s the truly overwhelming fear. It lurks in the back of our minds, especially when we hear that someone we know has gotten infected and is in isolation. It rears its ugly head when the virus actually comes into our house and attacks one of our own. But we choose to bury this monster deep inside and deal with it each on our own when in truth it would be better if we knew that someone else shares this terror.

We’re all going to be confused for a long time. We can choose to cower in our mental darkness, or we can choose to take control over the part of our lives which is ours to control. Like everything, it’s really up to us. And like everything new, it can be really scary. But then, hasn’t life always been scary?