The failure following so much deliberation for face-to-face education to start save pre-school and first-year classes due to the necessary measures not having been taken cannot be accounted for simply with a technical reason.
İhsan Çaralan
With yesterday’s TV news reports leading with, “Face-to-face education starts today,” most newspapers are also headlining this news.
But this was not really so because face-to-face education has only begun in year-one classes and pre-school classes. And this is restricted to five hours one day a week!
At registration time, we also saw official bodies and the government in general, which are coming down with a heavy hand over “mask, distance, hygiene” and even imposing stiff fines on non-compliers, not lifting one finger to prepare schools for education under pandemic conditions.
Apart from Minister of National Education Ziya Selçuk harping on about, “We are doing the best distance education” ever since April when schools were closed and “distance education” was embarked on, we were hit in the face by the striking lack of worthwhile preparation for face-to-face education that was done. Subsequent events have shown the plans that at their greatest extent had four or five options but were not implementation oriented or the “hybrid education” algorithms were aimed simply at keeping the public occupied and shepherding discussion.
It appears that the Ministry of National Education has taken no steps that education unions, educators and experts have long since been demanding such as the appointing of the necessary staff in adequate numbers, the improvement of schools’ physical conditions to the required level and creating the hygienic environment the pandemic requires.
So, were one to inquire, “With us having abandoned face-to-face education, has the Ministry of National Education taken action relating to distance education?” the Ministry of National Education would appear to have taken no step in this regard, either.
This is because, even though Minister of National Education Selçuk has conceded that one and a half million pupils will be unable to take advantage of distance education, absolutely no measure has been taken to surmount this problem. Those who were unable to benefit from distant education in April are also unable to do so today. Moreover, education unions state that the number of pupils unable to access distant education is in the region of six million and 95 per cent of pupils deemed to be accessing it are not benefitting properly from distant education. But there is no indication that the Ministry of National Education has taken action over this. Despite pronouncements from education unions and experts in the field that, to enable education to be continued under pandemic conditions, the Ministry of National Education must be given a supplementary budget to take the necessary action, neither the Ministry of National Education nor the government have heeded this request! Those in power, having opened the Treasury and Unemployment Fund for plunder by the bosses, has not given even one lira by way of supplementary budget to enable education to be continued to a degree under pandemic conditions.
Well, in the absence of face-to-face education, that is with the schools not opening, what are pupils up to?
Are they staying at home with the aim of not infecting our elderly people with the virus?
Are they heck!
Families having a modicum of income are sending their kids to courses and supplementary education centres because courses and supplementary education centres are clearly subject to no restriction whatsoever and are continuing their activities fully staffed without putting themselves out too much over pandemic measures.
Private schools are continuing face-to-face education in various forms.
And kids are not staying at home but are gathering with their friends in the streets and parks in front of apartment buildings and in housing complex sheltered areas and playing games. Then they go home. Youths spend the free time school absence gives them in places like mini-pitches, open parks and streets in their neighbourhoods or malls.
Experts declare the places pupils spend the time they get from not going to school to be more dangerous in terms of spreading the virus. Hence, what is making face-to-face education inoperable is not the coronavirus but the officials and government that fail to take the public health measures mandated by science for education to be conducted under virus conditions. In fact, the continuation of face-to-face education has proved possible in many countries, even if with certain restrictions.
For sure, the failure following so much deliberation for face-to-face education to start save pre-school and first-year classes due to the necessary measures not having been taken cannot be accounted for simply with a technical reason such as the non-taking of the necessary measures.
It would not be far from the truth to say that behind this thinking are the power holders of eighteen years who have looked with disdain at public education and that those who have undertaken “reform” after “reform” to demolish public education have used the fight against the virus to underpin the attaining of these goals.
To evade responsibility for the groove education has become stuck in, National Education Minister Selçuk sets parents’ minds at ease, saying, “Reading and writing will be learnt. And we will be astonished at how wonderfully and easily this will be done. Just like some children set out and learn of their own accord with nobody showing them… This is really how it is.” That is, “There is no need to go to school and come face to face with the teacher!”
And the Minister advances another formula for those not convinced by this rhetoric: “And my first-year children this year will learn to read and write like in normal times. Some of them through distance education and some of them face-to-face… Some of them early, some of them late… But they will learn!”
Do you see who is shirking from the necessary measures for face-to-face education and what mentality they nurture?
Does anything remain to be said?
Yusuf Karadaş
Yücel Özdemir
Ceren Sözeri