The Corona Generation by Jennie Bristow & Emma Gilland

Author:Jennie Bristow & Emma Gilland
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: John Hunt Publishing
Published: 2020-10-02T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 4

The adult world retreats

‘We are not, repeat not, closing schools now,’ insisted UK Prime Minister Boris Johnson on 12 March, arguing that the scientific advice was that school closures would do ‘more harm than good at this stage’.1 By the end of the following week, the nation’s bewildered children had been kicked out of their classrooms for what many believed would be an extended Easter break – a holiday that would last for 4 weeks, rather than the usual 2. Yet over 2 months later, the vast majority of children were still at home – with no clear idea of when, or how, they would be going back.

On 7 May, the World Bank reported that due to Covid-19, schools were closed for 85 per cent of children worldwide.2 Eighty-five per cent.

Even as some countries began tentative measures to ease lockdown, many children were consigned to stay-home policies until the autumn. In the UK, proposals for a limited opening of schools on 1 June to children in some year groups became a full-fledged political battle, with teaching unions demanding ‘clear, scientific published evidence’ showing that this would be safe for staff, and many parents reporting that they would be too scared to send their kids back.3

As I write, it is doubtful whether schools will return to normal even by September 2020. In a hard-hitting article headlined ‘Many Wealthy Parents Won’t Send Kids Back to School This Fall; That’s a Disaster Waiting to Happen’, Kiera Butler, senior editor of Mother Jones magazine, picked up on some tweeting anxiety among middle-class American parents. ‘No way we go back to a regular classroom without a vaccine,’ wrote one. ‘We’ll be sending our kid to an online school. Not ideal but there’s too much of a risk otherwise, particularly in a deep red area where people aren’t adhering to most of the distancing guidelines,’ said another.4 Universities, meanwhile, are being tasked with developing ‘contingency plans’ to run courses online in the event that campuses remain closed in the autumn, or are forced to close by another lockdown. By May 2020, some had already announced that they intended to teach mainly online for the 2020-21 academic year.

How did we get to this place? As discussed in Chapter Two, Covid-19 does not pose a great threat to the majority of children and young people. The big fear, which prompted the initial closure of schools, is that kids might be viral ‘super spreaders’, as they seem to be with flu; yet as the weeks have passed more evidence has challenged this assumption, with some studies suggesting they are less likely to transmit it than adults.5 Given the morbidity and mortality profile of Covid-19, it is understandable that some individual teachers will have good cause for concern about working in a crowded school while the virus is still spreading, and they should be protected. But as a group, the age and ethnicity profile of the teaching profession in the UK puts them at relatively low risk: around three-quarters are women, almost 90 per cent are white, and their average age is around 39.

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