EDITORIAL-SG: The Straits Times says: An opportunity for teachable moments
The Straits Times
The temporary shift to home-based learning for students in schools and institutes of higher learning may have introduced a measure of dislocation in the minds of children and their parents. From a parental perspective, the challenges of home-based learning tend to lie in getting the syllabus covered, ensuring children do not fall behind in schoolwork, and associated concerns, including passing exams.
Experts such as teachers and education psychologists have offered advice on how drawing up and sticking to a schedule for the week helps structure learning at home much as timetables do in school. Study breaks that include physical activity are important even as online distractions, video games and so on need to be avoided during the period of study. Implementing such regimes would require a display of parental discipline akin to what children expect and receive at school.
Unfortunately, many adults themselves are under stress – from the demands of their jobs to the weight of parenting. Children notice and internalise such tensions even if they are not discussed openly, something which most parents would not wish to do at home in order to avoid burdening the young with the worries that adults have. These are practical realities created by the onslaught of a disease which has transformed life here rapidly.
It is not possible to insulate children completely from the consequences of the pandemic, but parents naturally try to minimise its effects on the children. Yet it would be useful in the circumstances to turn a crisis into an opportunity for teachable moments about the real world.
These would revolve around alerting and sensitising children to the meaning of living through abnormal times such as now. The pandemic and the ensuing circuit breaker period have layered medical, economic and social aspects which children can grasp instinctively because their accustomed environment has been disrupted so quickly and intensely. This is a good time, for instance, to impress on them the importance of discovery and science, particularly medicine, in combating disease.
The economic dimension could include discussions of how families across social strata who have been hit deal with the situation, how government, the community and society work in tandem to plug gaps, provide support and help everyone get through the crisis. Children could benefit immensely from the lived recollections of grandparents who survived challenges that followed Independence in 1965, and of parents who went through recent global shocks: the terrorist attacks in the United States, the outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, and the global financial crisis. Invoking such times, which appeared desperate then, will help teach the young that learning includes being able to make the most of tough circumstances.
