The epidemic of the coronavirus has stopped the world from functioning as it has been known for generations. It puts to the test not only financial liquidity, family relationships, the psyche of the individual, but also a classic school model, with which we were forced to say goodbye at the beginning of March.
Teachers had to face the challenge of distance learning, use platforms and tools that have not been tested so far, familiarize themselves with and co-create a new space for education, with methods of management, control and feedback, which have not been tested yet.
The creation of this new distance learning structure is currently facing a large wave of criticism within the educational environment as well as from parents. Closing the schools overnight prevented the teaching council from developing joint and coherent methods of action during the crisis, setting priorities, or finding optimal solutions. There was no time to analyze even hypothetical educational activities conducted remotely, and there was not enough space to set specific educational goals.
In such conditions it is difficult to talk about developing key competences, i.e. the possibility of combining knowledge, skills and attitudes considered necessary for the needs of self-fulfillment and personal development, active citizenship, social integration and employment.
We are witnessing the creation of a new communication skill based on a single tool: the Internet. Both students and teachers are forced to create a communication code on an ongoing basis, i.e. the framework in which student-teacher interaction occurs. In this case, the so-called the communication context is neither routine nor socially agreed. Thus, before our eyes, a new language and a new culture of school communication are being created, built on experiences based on the previous, classic model of functioning in the school space.
The teacher does not have access to the overall, i.e. verbal and non-verbal response to the content of the transmitted knowledge. The student's reaction also remains mostly unknown. The ultimately undefined purpose of remote teaching transfers responsibility for the educational process to the shoulders of the recipient, in this case the student, and often (applies to younger children) also a family home, which does not always cope with the challenge. The current situation thus highlights the social inequalities so dependent on family resources!
Focused on cognitive tasks, we forget about the emotional and social side of education. Apart from instilling in citizens the rules of conduct during a pandemic (stay at home! Wash your hands! Keep your distance!), there was no space for conversations with young people about their well-being, anticipation fear, controlling excitement and regulation of emotions, or tolerance of uncertainty.
Disturbed by an unstructured day (other hours of classes, sleep, meals), the routine that gives the individual a sense of security, results in increasing frustration, a sense of helplessness and loneliness.
The peer group in its original definition of Charles Colley ceases to exist today, there is no direct face-to-face contact or the fusion of individualities in a common whole, common life and purpose of the group.
We cannot predict the duration of the pandemic or its effects. Pessimistic vision makes us see an analogy to the concept of society according to Kurt Hahn, the precursor of pedagogy of experiences. We are talking about four deficiencies:
1) distribution of physical activity,
2) lack of initiative and spontaneity,
3) lack of care
and
4) lack of human involvement.
I believe that our Foundation will be able to meet the needs of society, support teachers and students in finding themselves in the new reality, expressing their own opinions, feelings, and trust someone again. The International Youth Meeting Center is able to build a Tönniesian community and give rise to Aristotelian friendship. It is especially today that we should be aware that young people, regardless of the situation, deserve a chance to discover themselves. And just like in the last 30 years of our activity, we should give them space to experience victories and defeats and the opportunity to devote to common tasks, exercising imagination.
I would like to see the Foundation, with its educational experience, as a participant in creating a new education model, with all its empathy and the desire to strengthen the individual to become a better citizen of the world, aware of their strong points and able to build bridges. Even online.
Anna Kizeweter - Member of the Council of the International Youth Meeting Centre
