Since the return of school students across Victoria, the relief that students, parents and teachers feel at being able to return to ‘normal’ school cannot be underestimated.
I became a teacher because I wanted to make a difference in the lives of young people, teaching students work and life skills, and pathways to their dreams.
The resilience shown by students, teachers and parents throughout this COVID-19 pandemic has been truly uplifting. However, there is a dark side to school system responses to COVID-19, which has not yet been given sufficient attention.
As a Cobram year level leader for Years 9 and 10 it deeply concerns me that any state government would consider inflicting further damage to student’s mental wellbeing and education with more home schooling.
I have been on the other end of phone calls to crying students when I asked “How are you going?” Home schooling is not just a slight inconvenience. Tragically, there have been student suicides. The state government response to isolated rural and regional students has lacked compassion and “online learning” is never a substitute for face-to-face education and seeing friends.
The time for students being held back from face to face learning must now be over. For good. No political leader should be able to so casually require students, in the most formative years of their lives – to stay at home for “just another few weeks”.
Instead students (and teachers) should be fully vaccinated, wear masks and practice social distancing – until such time as those restrictions too are no longer required. Have good air flow in classrooms and conduct outdoor classes when possible. It’s not that hard. Staying at home deprives our young people of friendships, playing in a team and peer leadership, rites of passage that can never be recaptured.
Steve Brooks is the Liberal candidate for Nicholls.
