Covid19: The need to rethink life's pace

Dr Gabrielle Jamela Hosein

I’m intrigued by efforts to keep life going as normal. Recognising the real limitations people are facing, what’s wrong with slowing down?

Ziya’s school, like many, has done an amazing job of leaping into online teaching so there are due dates for assignments and livestream sessions. It’s a 21st-century tech-savvy response that should draw big respect.

However, while observing assignments and livestreams targeted to students within typical school hours, I couldn’t help thinking of parents already struggling to work from home, inefficiently, and who now have to simultaneously manage online primary education.

I thought of single parents with only one laptop or computer who would have to juggle their online meetings and deliverables with those of their children. I thought of the parents who were still required at their workplaces or were beginning to worry about making ends meet, and wondered at the additional strain of such demands.

In striving to do our best to maintain content, are we working in silos without realising? How might it be different if we understood our assumptions, as employers and educators, and targeted our efforts and expectations less toward the ideal and more toward the realistic circumstances of those we engage?

If students can’t meet these expectations, are the failures theirs or even their parents', or a result of expectations that create more stress in order to be met?

I thought too of how economic inequality sifts our opportunities at this time. For there are parents and schools, from Toco to Cedros to Chaguaramas, where children don’t have access to connectivity, data or computers that could meet standards of wealthier school communities.

For those children already depending on school-feeding programmes, is this a moment that will deepen the class and educational divide? As a university educator, I thought about my own students. Some are parents who wouldn’t be able to produce school assignments with the same efficiency.

Some have moved back home and are left with poor internet capability. Some are anxious about their own health or their family. Some have a partner worried about a cliff-drop in income or one who is at risk for increased alcohol and substance abuse.

Being isolated at home, possibly losing income, caring for sick relatives, disagreement over roles and resources, and having fewer outlets for relieving boredom and anger will increase family conflict. Our social services and call lines are incapable of meeting public need. Some, and their children, are at far greater risk of violence.

There are also students who may not be ready for a fast move to a new online normal.

Organising group presentations online is far more stress and effort than doing so in person on campus. All these things are possible in this day and age, but to expect immediate adjustment is an option, not a necessity.

So why don’t we opt out of trying to achieve as normal? What if we used this time instead to achieve, but a little less, observing that the world will not end, but that there may be some improvements?

Maybe we spend less time rushing through the day, without traffic and exhaustion. Maybe we do more talking now that we are home together. Maybe children run about in the backyard, and get time without everyday extra lessons for SEA. Maybe we spend more time with elders, who might be scared and feeling alone.

Maybe we call each other more, across the country and the world. Maybe we question our old normal and ask if it was really our best. Could we be better about how we use our time, knowing why and how we pursue knowledge, in this moment?

I cut some lectures which didn't risk my learning objectives. I cut down exam content. I reduced the number of final assignments. Maintaining last month’s rules would simply test survival under increased pressure and show lack of empathy.

I’m not only asking us to consider the balance between keeping up and slowing down. I’m saying that it is possible to enable new opportunities and give breathing space to better priorities. These weeks, and likely months, should be planned as if families, homes and economies are feeling, and soon experiencing, crisis.

Our educational institutions have an opportunity to respond to that in our approach to teaching and learning, in the interest of students, parents and teachers, as if inequalities and their implications persist amidst these weeks’ new realities.