Family literacy programmes can be a lifeline for disadvantaged parents and caregivers who are struggling to support their children’s learning during the pandemic, write Anna Kaiper-Marquez and Esther Prins
A recent New Yorker/ProPublica
article chronicled the immense challenges facing children in poverty who
are studying remotely during the pandemic. Shemar, a 12-year-old in Baltimore,
Maryland (USA), lived with his grandmother. Having completed little schooling
in then-segregated South Carolina, his grandmother was unable to get online or
supervise Shemar’s online schoolwork. She is not alone: millions of caregivers
– across all socio-economic strata – have struggled to monitor and guide their
children’s education during the pandemic.
What if this
grandmother and other caretakers had access to family literacy programmes where
they could further their own education, such as digital or print literacy,
while also learning how to support their children’s education? Family literacy
programmes are not a panacea to fix poverty, racism, under-funded schools, the
digital divide, and other causes of educational inequalities. Yet they do have
great potential to serve as a community resource and educational safety net for
families like Shemar’s. Continue reading →
The current crisis need not result in a further erosion of social and economic rights and the widening of inequalities – it also represents an opportunity to appeal to global solidarity and rehumanize lifelong learning, writes Maren Elfert
Educators around
the world are alarmed about the consequences of the COVIID-19 crisis. A lively
debate has emerged on what the world might look like in the aftermath of the
crisis in relation to education and more broadly. I would like to add my voice
to those who emphasize that our perspective must be bigger than COVID-19 and
that we should take the crisis as an opportunity to learn from past mistakes
and rethink our approach to education. As a recent article argued in relation
to schools, ‘When the Covid crisis finally ends, schools must never return to
normal’ (Sweeney, 2020), referring to the need to abandon harmful practices such
as deprofessionalizing teachers, excessive testing and the culture of rankings.
This discussion, of course, is related to how we organize our society and how
we deal with the larger environmental, economic, social and political crisis of
which COVID-19 is a symptom.
To paraphrase
Charles Dickens, there is potential in this crisis for the best of times or the
worst of times. The crisis could offer us an opportunity to rethink and
innovate our societies or to move further down the path of dehumanization of
education in terms of ‘one size fits all teaching’ in schools and lifelong
learning as a market commodity. Among the questions and issues that are raised
in the current debates are: In light of the public health and ensuing economic
crisis, will global inequalities in access to
education widen, disrupting progress towards
Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) (UNESCO/IIEP, 2020)? Distance education is being pushed by
corporate interests (Williamson,
2020), but it bears
the risk of further marginalizing disadvantaged students who do not have access
to technology and who depend on teacher-student relationships (Srivastava, 2020; Parramore, 2020). For many students, school represents a place to
socialize and often get the only meal of the day (UNICEF, 2020). Higher education institutions around the world are
preparing for significant drops of international students, and quite a number
of them will probably not survive. Will this lead to a reconsideration of
education as a market model, or just to even more tightened competition? Some
thinkers, such as the Italian political philosopher Giorgio Agamben (2020a; 2020b), are concerned about the de-humanization of human
beings as a consequence of ‘social distancing’. Arjun Appadurai, in a recent
keynote panel of UNESCO’s ‘Futures of Education’ initiative, warned of the risk
that education might be considered unimportant in these times of crisis (UNESCO, 2020). This might translate into cuts to education. Continue reading →
Educational interventions to address the challenges created by the COVID-19 pandemic need to acknowledge the realities of life in the most disadvantaged communities if they are not to exacerbate existing inequalities, argues Rakhat Zholdoshalieva
The magnitude of the global health
crisis, and the long-term impact it is likely to have on the economy, society
and education, was unimaginable just a few weeks ago. Such crises spark
understandable fear and anxiety, as we come to terms with the impact both on our
physical and psychological health and on our economic, financial, environmental
and social life in the months and years to come.
As someone who works in adult learning,
with a focus on youth and adult literacy and people who experience multiple
forms of discrimination and disadvantage, I observe that many of our evolving solutions,
advice, lessons and reflections ignore the reality of life for many children,
youth, adults, families, communities and regions around the world. In times of massive
disruption, disorientation and anxiety at global level, it is more important than
ever that we do not lose sight of those who historically have been out of sight
and out of mind when it comes to policies and actions. Continue reading →
