Nobody is a stranger to the fact that 2020 has been a rollercoaster of a year. It has made us view life in a totally new perspective and forced new lifestyles on all of us, whether students, employees, or even employers. The major event of this unpredictable year has been, without a doubt, the global pandemic that took over our life, closed borders, and halted economies around the world.
I remember when schools and universities were closing down my sister and I were pretty happy with the idea of having a two-week vacation, but soon, two weeks turned into two months and more and more people were begging for universities and schools to reopen so that they could go back to in person learning.
It is now October, 7 months after the transition to online learning our morale is at its lowest, our mental health is degrading everyday, and we miss the classrooms and whiteboards more than ever. For the older generation of students like my sister or I, online learning may take a huge toll on our morale, but we are not in the demographics of people for whom this constitutes a true physical health issue. Younger children need to go to school in order to develop properly both mentally and physically. In fact, the immune system of a child is primarily built by rolling in the dirt and being exposed to “safe viruses” in school settings.
One might find that this echoes the arguments of the United States’ anti-maskers who say that: if kids wear masks around we will be raising an entire generation of immune-deficient children. While they are completely wrong on the fact that kids should not wear masks, they are not wrong about the fact that children need to be exposed to “safe germs” and “safe viruses” that are present in camps, schools and daycare to properly develop. So what should we do? Should schools really reopen in times of COVID?
In order to answer this question, I contacted Dr. Rana Sharara from the Pediatric and Adolescent Medicine Department in AUBMC and co-founder of the Lebanese NGO Parents Wise. According to her, before we question if schools should reopen we should question if they are capable of reopening in Lebanon right now, and the answer is no and that is “unacceptable.” On the one hand, Lebanon is a country that is not in lockdown right now: bars, nightclubs, restaurants and many more virus spreading venues are open alongside parties and wedding ceremonies happening every weekend. On the other hand, the only establishments closed are schools and universities. Dr. Sharara continues her point by giving the example of Canada, there the government closed the whole country (including pubs, nightclubs, and restaurants!) in order to be able to contain the virus and send the kids back to school since they treat education as a priority. However, Lebanon on the other hand is letting things spiral out of control by opening everything for the sake of the economy, letting the daily cases reach the thousands, and making it almost impossible for schools and daycares to fully reopen since the rates of contamination have skyrocketed. So, in summary, for Dr. Sharara there is a lot more work to be done by the government before we can even consider schools reopening.
Now on the premise that the country goes into complete lockdown and is able to stabilize the rate of contamination of COVID, from a health standpoint, Dr. Sharara says that the age of the children dictates whether they should go back to school or not. Most recent studies have shown that adolescents catch and transmit the virus just like adults, so for them, staying at home and pushing through remote learning would be the best solution. However, younger kids have a fifty percent less chance of catching and transmitting the virus. Nevertheless, saying that they are fifty percent less likely to catch the virus does not mean that they are excused from following the safety guidelines set in times of COVID, and this is where the anti-maskers’ argument crumbles because the kids are still at risk of catching it and transmitting it to a grandparent or a person who has a weaker immune system.
Nonetheless, Dr. Sharara says that there are some things that school provides that the caregiver will not be able to give. They need to learn how to write, how to read, and, most importantly, how to interact in society. This all helps to build their personality and their social and developmental skills. Therefore, for younger kids, in a protected environment, the benefits of going to school outweigh the risks.
Dr. Sharara points out that even though children would benefit a lot from going back to life behind their tiny desks, schools still have a lot of homework to do on their part. There needs to be a real plan put into place to tackle life during the COVID-19 pandemic. They need to take the temperature of every kid every single morning as well as ask them if they are feeling any bodily symptoms; if it appears that one of the kids is showing COVID symptoms, they should be ready to tackle it i.e they would need to have a room to isolate the kid. Moreover, schools should have the means to socially distance the kids from each other, and, most importantly, they should be ready in case of a coronavirus surge. Dr. Sharara noted that they should have a way of screening their students and informing parents, while also ensuring that they prevent the stigmatisation of the COVID-19 positive students and making sure parents fulfill their duties and cooperate with the school in order for the appropriate precautions and action plans to be put in place in the shortest time possible.
After she informed me of the ways schools should be ready, I asked Dr. Sharara about schools that may not have the means to implement these plans such as public schools. To that, she simply replied that it would be the government’s responsibility to provide every establishment with the means to tackle a pandemic instead of creating bigger inequalities between the classes. She finishes by saying that it is principally the students of public schools, those that can not afford a private education, that should be taken into account because they are the ones that Lebanon needs to educate to create a future generation with less disparities, and most importantly an educated generation that can eventually boost the economy of the country. Dr. Sharara concluded by saying that “[education] is how you build the future generations.” The fate of Lebanese youth is once again in the hands of the government, will they be prioritised or will their futures once again be jeopardised?
