I walk into the kitchen in the middle of one of Callum’s science lessons (he has no audio to speak to the teacher, it’s a one-way system).
The statement comes as I’m making my breakfast.
"Dad, Miss Scott has a really bad picture of Uranus".
Slight pause, while I decide the best way to deal with this.
Me: “How the hell did she get hold of that, wait till I speak to the head teacher about this, who sent that in!”.
And so this is home school.
Most of the time Callum sits utterly disengaged as the teacher dictates facts from the slides that come on the screen.
Generally he’s done the work before the lesson so he already knows what’s being said and the problem here is the loss of any inspiration for the students.
One of his friends is ‘spamming the chat’ and the teacher says he’ll be reported to head of science (but he won’t) because the poor kids are just bored out of their minds as people try to adapt to a new situation where they provide old-style teaching over a new medium which won’t work.
Please don’t see this as a criticism of teachers, it absolutely is not.
Poor Miss Scott has 60 children on a call with one-way audio and text chat to deal with.
Most of the children’s parents are trying to work from home and see the lessons as a way to get some phone calls done or some work in.
The fact is though that this can’t go on forever.
One way or another we have to get kids back together because as this goes on for longer the lack of interaction with other children is damaging and actually heartbreaking.
After his first six weeks of paradise, Callum Is now fed up.
He met one of his friends the other day at the park and they were able to kick a ball to each other from 2 metres away (or further) and he lit up like a firework.
The intangible damage of social distancing to human psychology will be measured for years after this.
It’s not the same doing a quiz on Zoom as being sat beside someone on the sofa having a drink and looking face to face.
The home schooling thing is just one example, I’ve had a loss of social contact and it’s had the most enormous impact.
When the rules are lessened and the restrictions reduce, the ability to engage in proper social contact again will be the one thing I think that we will realise we lost, that has been the hardest thing.
We should treasure that, it’s one of the things that we should celebrate and never forget what it was like in the spring of 2020.
Blog Post Number - 2379
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