Marcos: Bring back face-to-face classes to prevent ‘zombie kids,’ ‘vampire moms’

The numbing effect of prolonged distance learning has transformed once cheerful kids, doting moms, and exuberant teachers into “vampire moms and mentors,” Senator Imee Marcos said on Sunday.

“This is the hidden horror of the pandemic – the slow death of the cognitive, mental, emotional and social faculties of young students and of the tolerance and sympathy of bone-tired mothers and teachers finishing home and office tasks late at night,” she lamented.

Calling another school year of distance learning “unsustainable,” Marcos has backed the Department of Education, Commission on Higher Education, and National Economic Development Authority (NEDA) that favor piloting face-to-face classes as soon as possible where infection rates remain low.

“Distance learning is a stop-gap measure, not a long-term solution for education should the pandemic endure. Students are at risk of being part of a whole generation that could lose its love of learning, optimism, ambition, and even productivity,” she said.

“Our mothers and teachers also need to gain back their work-life balance,” Marcos said.

The United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF) has asserted that “schools should be the last to close and the first to reopen,” warning of the pandemic’s “life-altering impact on an entire generation of children and young people, especially the most marginalized.”

Meanwhile, the World Bank has estimated that school closures lasting just five months could result in a loss of 0.6 years of schooling, while the NEDA has computed that only one year away from face-to-face classes could result in an Php11-trillion loss in productivity over the next 40 years.

“There is no lack of best practices that can be applied here,” Marcos said, citing logistical changes in face-to-face learning that are being adopted worldwide.

“The strict observance of ‘new normal’ rules of behavior may be a little more challenging but doable,” she added.

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Source: Latest Politics News Today (Politics.com.ph)