It seems that the Government of the Canary Islands, in the midst of a health, economic, social and care crisis, is opting to implement virtual education in all educational stages to "continue the educational process." This crisis, which we are experiencing globally, affects all of us, but it does not affect us equally. On the contrary, it has revealed the shortcomings that our public education, health and social welfare systems have always had, but which have now become more evident. Therefore, it is necessary that the views from the offices, the urgencies and the arrogant attitudes do not prevent us from seeing reality and what is truly important. It is precisely now, when families are confined to their homes, that the vulnerabilities of our students become more evident. Why, as has been done in other areas of society, have the educational authorities not stopped to think about what role the school should play at this time? Why don't they count on the educational communities to seek effective, humanistic and realistic solutions? We are living through a catastrophe that will be part of history. We cannot pretend to act as if nothing is happening here. It would be important to prioritize the emotional health of children and adolescents, support families in overcoming this hurdle, and take advantage of all the learning that this pandemic is leaving us.
Our children and young people, in seclusion.
Four weeks of confinement already. And two more, at least, ahead! We face them aware that the effort is necessary, but you will agree with me that on more than one occasion we have felt frustration, overwhelm, fear, discouragement?, testing our emotional stability. All this is greatly influenced by the situation in the house where we are confined. If this happens to adults, how can our children and adolescents be experiencing it? They are confined, deprived of the open air, the street, the school / institute, their extended family, their friends, their group of classmates with whom they share their days, their classes, their activities, their breaks, their dreams, their madness, their catches, their intimacies, their joys, their anger, their experiences? And as the days go by, they experience how tension, fatigue, anxiety, emotional stress, and in some cases episodes of violence, increase in their homes, in which intense relationships and situations are maintained for which adults have some strategies to cope with them, but that our children and young people are still learning.
To all of the above, we must add the diversity of requirements that come from educational centers, sometimes producing even more tension in family life. Faced with the confusing instructions from the Ministry of Education, we find a wide variety of school responses, from centers that have done a job of support and empathy with their students and their families, to those that have implemented an online school schedule with daily homework, to those that are overwhelmed by the conditions of poverty and vulnerability of their students, whose families especially suffer the consequences of the scenario caused by the coronavirus pandemic.
It is shocking to think about the experiences that our children and young people may be having, in their wide diversity. According to information published in the press, students with zero quotas in school canteens are being cared for. But who takes care of those aspects that are also fundamental for their personal, social, affective and emotional development, when families are unable to do so because they lack the tools or because of the overwhelm that the current situation is causing them? Does the current moment not require a comprehensive work from the educational field, with the intervention of different professionals? How can we do without the 36 social educators at this time, who have worked for three school years in around 70 educational centers in the Canary Islands, instead of increasing their number and clearly defining their functions in the emergency period? When the great problem of educational equity is in the centers located in contexts of special precariousness, social educators could work to find resources, ensure emotional support, support, routine work, monitoring, facilitation of tools? to the most vulnerable girls, boys, adolescents and families, who are especially difficult to reach. It is worrying that the loss of this professional group is for the same reason as that given in relation to replacements, in the technical table with the unions on April 3, in which the Ministry reported that the intention is to carry out all possible, attending to "the rationalization of public spending in the current situation, valuing and adopting equitable pedagogical and legal criteria." Since March 12, at least on the Ministry's website, no appointment has appeared. Question of "rationalization", perhaps of priorities? In this exceptional situation, it seems that machines are being missed more than people. I say this because of the much-touted digital divide.
It is not the digital divide, it is the social divide.
The decision to continue classes telematically in the face of a crisis such as the coronavirus would seem the most reasonable, in the 21st century. However, in the Canary Islands, it is not a feasible solution for everyone. In this period of quarantine at home, educational communities have made great efforts to continue classes and reinforce and expand the content worked on in the centers. But these great efforts have not been able to prevent the feeling of impotence from spreading, because to pretend today that the Canarian educational system performs its function at a distance with equity is a chimera. A particularly difficult moment has been the second evaluation, which the Ministry of Education mandated to carry out, with the corresponding communication of grades to families. Virtually, teachers have had to decide grades and propose recovery plans, being aware that this information, sent in a cold and distant way to homes in the current situation of uncertainty, would serve little good and that these plans will be impossible to carry out.
Before the COVID-19 crisis, the Canary Islands had a large population at risk of poverty, with high unemployment rates, with a large amount of low-quality employment (either due to temporality or partiality), with strong housing shortages, with an economic model that, structurally, is tremendously fragile and dependent, with care work - which has become essential to sustain confinement - invisible and undervalued, with a high early school dropout rate, with significant rates of grade repetition and students at risk of poverty and social exclusion, with very high ratios, with insufficient staff, with a lack of specialists, with overloaded teaching hours for teachers, with little family participation, with a low cultural level of the adult population as a whole? The crisis faced in this structural framework shows that emergencies are not only health-related.
And it is in these circumstances that the Minister of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands says that the reason that prevents "guaranteeing the pedagogical continuity required by the constitutional nature of the right to education" is the digital divide, and that is why "the acquisition of tablets and data cards is being enabled, in collaboration with local administrations." This measure is welcome. It is true that the right to education includes the guarantee and free provision of the resources necessary for learning, but it is not the only factor that favors educational inequality. The educational gap is not only caused by the difficulty of access to technology, but will be decisively marked by the reality that students live, which will also delimit the use they make of this technology, an indiscriminate use of the screen or an accompaniment in its use and in the learning process by the family.
Teachers who live with their students every day know that not all homes are a good educational space, that the students who had the most difficulties when they went to class, who worried about how they would arrive on Mondays, are also those who can have the least educational attention now, because their families do not have the capacities, the time or the resources to do so. The difficulties are aggravated when they need specialized and individualized attention, with specialists, materials and adapted environments, and their families are lost and helpless.
We can imagine what is happening at this time and what will happen when students return to our centers. Will it be possible for our Canarian government to be attentive to these needs and seek solutions, obliged "by the constitutional nature of the right to education", as the Minister says? Or is the cessation of the work of social educators a sign of how it will address educational equity in times of coronavirus?
In the schools where I have worked until last year, in the report that was sent to the Ministry evaluation after evaluation, we have insisted, year after year, that the socializing baggage that our students bring and live at home marked their progress and that a real socio-educational intervention was essential, with a reduction in ratios, personalized and comprehensive work from the school with the participation of various professionals, socio-economic-cultural support to those families, less bureaucratic and more community work? We never received a response!
For now, in addition to the Minister's announcement that families will be provided with tablets and data cards, they have posted on their social networks the guides "Teaching and learning from home" prepared by the EDULLAB Research Group of the University of La Laguna in collaboration with the Ministry of Education of the Government of the Canary Islands, which states that "Distance education or studying at home with children and adolescents cannot be developed without the participation and support of families. As we have indicated, this training modality is based on the self-learning of students. Minors, in this sense, need the presence of an adult who encourages, stimulates, controls and tutors them during the time of interaction of that child with a material or virtual environment." It is clear!
We cannot allow the social divide to create even more distance in the most vulnerable children and adolescents. It is not the time to prioritize the "advance in the educational digital agenda". Teachers will continue to propose activities, taking advantage of everyday things as a resource or learning situation, generating pleasant moments, support and accompaniment in these days of confinement, and they will do so in all the ways that are possible for them. We will talk about this in a future reflection. But do not ask them for the impossible. If you want to fulfill the message raised by Minister Isabel Celaá, and assumed by Minister Mª José Guerra of "that no student, that no student is left behind", you have to prioritize people, not machines.
Mary C. Bolaños Espinosa. Harimaguada Collective