Education in the pandemic: how the coronavirus crisis can affect children’s learning

During the quarantine, about 19.5 million Brazilian students had their classes suspended, according to data released by the nation’s Senate. It took time for both schools and students to adapt and, in fact, implement a remote teaching regime.

What is the impact of this period of closed doors and distance on children’s learning? More: What is the impact of this situation on their long-term learning?

We still need studies on the subject, but let us keep in mind the likely impacts, to prepare ourselves to make up for lost time. This is the subject of this article.

The effects of the crisis

It is true that this pandemic is something rare. The last time the world was plagued by a similar pandemic was during the Spanish flu in the first two decades of the twentieth century.

Unfortunately, we do not have good data on the effects of that pandemic on education. However, history offers us some examples that can help us think about the problem by analogy.

A strike by New York teachers in 1968 closed the doors of schools for two months; another, in France and Belgium in 1990, resulted in an educational gap for a similar period. Natural disasters such as hurricanes, earthquakes, tsunamis, etc., have also been responsible for the interruption of school periods. Even racism had its share in worsening educational problems: segregational movements made it impossible for black children to attend school for at least four years, between 1959 and 1963, in Virginia.

In all these cases, the impacts were negative. In New York, for example, after classes began again, the average score of the students impacted was two points lower than the average for the previous year. In the European case, the children affected by the strike were more likely to repeat the year and, on average, did not advance as much in their studies as the others.

Technology does not solve everything

What can be done, therefore, to mitigate the negative impacts that, given the historical examples, will surely come?

It is a fact that technology represents an advantage in terms of learning compared to the current pandemic with these facts of the past. All over the world, millions of students were able to continue attending classes due to an unprecedented effort by organizations to adapt to large-scale adoption of distance learning tools.

In this regard, the initial challenges were largely related to the ability of institutions, teachers, students and parents to adapt to the new model.

However, it was not just a change in technology. There are several points to consider when evaluating teaching methods for learning in extremely adverse situations which, even with the facilities provided by distance learning, still need to be considered.

Psychological aspects

One of these is the psychological impact, which negatively and substantially affects students’ learning.

Teenagers and children are living in a tense environment and it is not always possible to preserve them from negative effects such as anxiety, depression, and distress.

In younger children, this can manifest itself in a behavioral or somatic way, with pain, change of appetite and sleeping problems. Among the older ones, somatic cases prevail: fear, nervousness, stress, irritability…

All this leads to concentration and demotivation difficulties, which further impairs the learning teaching process. Among adults, burnout has once again become a source of concern for companies and professionals all over the world, given the routine mix between home and work, the intensity of bad news, the dominant anxiety, etc. It is not difficult to project analogous difficulties for teens and children.

Socioeconomic aspects

Another occasional problem concerns the socioeconomic aspect: not all children have access to the same opportunities.

In Brazil alone, 4.8 million children and adolescents still do not have access to the Internet at home. Moreover, the disparity between the realities of Brazilian families can also negatively impact this situation. Children in two-parent families — especially those who are financially stable — are more assisted by their parents than children in single-parent families, where the parent needs to do everything alone.

On another level, it is possible to think of the inequality that is getting worse as many families have the resources to hire nannies or private teachers who can help in the learning process at home. Most parents, however, do not have such resources and need to share the work routine with their children. The case becomes even more complicated for those who have always worked in essential services and have never adhered to remote work routines.

Age aspects

Learning is also different between ages.

Children learning basic arithmetic, for example, can have clear benefits with the use of gamification instead of a multiplication table. The challenges, in cases like this, relate much more to the ability of families to organize the study and monitor activities, given the difficulty of conciliation with work.

In other cases, it is not so easy. Children who are learning to read, however, may not take much advantage of long, remote activities. Those in kindergarten, who still do not read and mostly have their activities focused on the development of fine motor skills, will suffer substantial impacts with the adoption of a freer educational system, such as remote teaching, which seeks to merge distance learning with fixation activities.

Socialization, an essential element for the learning process and the development of young people and children, has also been hampered. The lack of conviviality with colleagues and teachers, the loneliness, the unpredictability and the loss of routine also certainly impacted children and young people in a different way. Those better able to understand what was really happening certainly had more tools to deal with the crisis. The differences in communication within families will also account for different impacts for each student.

What to expect

Although we don’t have enough data yet, some predictions can be made:

Most of the children will be behind what they would be in normal scenarios, further aggravating the quality gap in education in the country;

There will be a significant discrepancy in the learning of children with academically educated parents compared to children with less educated parents;

Many children will need to repeat the year — especially those in kindergarten. This may delay the normal education schedule for many of them.

In this sense, the challenge for schools and teachers is to assess which children need special attention, especially in a predominantly technological setting where there are no tools for continued assessment. More than ever, customized and personalized student learning will be necessary. It is also up to the schools to guarantee services to help parents, both in pedagogical terms and in terms of psychological accompaniment in relation to their children, enabling psychologists and social workers whenever necessary.

On the part of parents, it is important to be always attentive to their children’s behavior — and especially to their changes — seeking help and professional accompaniment whenever necessary.

It is the State’s responsibility to provide resources for education, ensuring that all financial demands are met so that the many — and certain — setbacks coming from a school gap can be mitigated.