COLUMN: Close 2 weeks and give teachers the jab
Fellow citizens, may you kindly help me to respond to this question: Actually, what are they drinking and inhaling at the National Department of Basic Education? I will revert back to this point a bit later.
With terrifying ferocity, the Covid-19 pandemic has gravely paralysed the quality and pace of learning and teaching at almost all public schools in the country. Rotational school attendance, lesser teaching, sporadic learning and curtailed curriculum have become the pedagogic remnants of Covid-19. The imposition of stringent lockdown measures against Covid-19 has caused a severe loss of educational knowledge in the education sector.
The pandemic-induced closure of schools has wrought immeasurable devastation on the body polity of public education. Consequently, primary school learners have lost precious educational content on elementary literacy, numeracy and arithmetic sequencing. The lack of online learning infrastructure at public schools has worsened the prospects of millions of learners countrywide. The implication is that only learners at private schools are able to receive online education whilst at home. Covid-19 has laid bare the contrasting pitfalls of public education and the digital prowess of private education.
Another regrettable downside is that the bludgeoning pandemic has claimed the lives of multitudes of teachers since March 2020. The National Department of Basic Education (NDBE) has dismally failed to protect the health and lives of teachers in the midst of Covid-19.
The Minister of Basic Education, Angie Motshekga’s irrational, defiant and belligerent attitude has enabled the pandemic to obliterate our education fraternity. At the height of the deadliest second and third waves of Covid-19, Motshekga irrationally insisted that schools must remain open. In the face of rising infections and fatalities at schools, the minister instructs her teachers to soldier on and keep fighting. Even history’s most atrocious autocrat, Adolf Hitler, was not that hyper-belligerent.
Irrationality is indeed far much worse than incompetence.
Currently, thousands of school teachers and learners countrywide have been infected with Covid-19. The NDBE must urgently close schools for two weeks and use this period to vaccinate all teachers.
