0SCHA-Indian Children Studying in Open Air Against Covid-2

The Virus That Shut Down the World: Education in Crisis

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Children all over the world have had their education severely disrupted this year, as schools struggle to cope with repeated closures and re-openings, and the transition, if it’s even an option, to online schooling. Disadvantaged children, however, have been worst-hit by the emergency measures. In this part of our look back at the effect that COVID-19 has had on the world, we focus on the education crisis provoked by the pandemic. School closures as a result of health and other crises are not new, at least not in the developing world, and the potentially devastating consequences are well known; loss of learning and higher drop-out rates, increased violence against children, teen pregnancies and early marriages. What sets the COVID-19 pandemic apart from all other crises is that it has affected children everywhere and at the same time. Complete Article  HERE

 

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An Opportunity to Change the Cycle of Hate

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Every day, around 60 million children in the Middle East and North Africa region and between 200-300 million children in the Muslim world turn up to school. Over the last decades, these schools have taught a regular and unchanging diet of hatred towards Jews. The intensity has varied from country to country, but the central themes are consistent: the canards that Jews tried to kill the Prophet, that they control the global economy, media and politics. Anti-Jewish racism infected the Arab and Muslim world so successfully and so completely, that people from the region who hold tolerant, anti-racist attitudes to Jews are outliers. But it does not have to be this way. Research by IMPACT-se shows that there have been recent improvements in textbooks across the MENA region. In the UAE, Sheikh Mohammed bin Zayed bin Sultan Al Nahyan reformed the school curriculum that had been authored by the Muslim Brotherhood. It is now quite remarkably different, teaching tolerance and peacemaking. In Tunisia, textbooks educate about the importance of negotiations, peace, and respect for the Other. Complete Article  HERE

pic- Afghani Children--CSM Children Bouncing Back

‘Lost Year’ for Education: Global Lessons on How Students Can Rebound

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Societies that rebuilt their education systems after war and natural disasters may offer lessons on how to close the learning gap opened by the pandemic. “A catastrophe, a pandemic is likely to have a negative impact on outcomes,” says Emma García, an education expert at the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute in Washington. Nonetheless, she says these negative effects can be corrected after a few years if teaching resources are redirected to students who most need them. Student assessments need to move beyond test scores to capture such skills, so that educators can reinforce and leverage students’ social and emotional capabilities that may have improved during the pandemic. “Resilience, tolerance, understanding, sympathy, creativity – those are assets,” she says. Indeed, from Afghanistan to Sierra Leone to the United States, there are some reasons for optimism—not only that students can recover academically, but that they can gain healthy coping mechanisms for future challenges.  Complete Article HERE

Brief pic_Northland Age-World -Leading Education Now Average

World-Leading Education Now ‘Decidedly Average’

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Schools around New Zealand are paying tens of thousands of dollars to private consultants to help them improve the way they teach reading. They are introducing the so-called “structured literacy” approach, more commonly known as phonics. While backed by 30 years of educational research, it is not funded by the Ministry of Education. Developed by the New Zealand educationalist Dame Marie Clay, the “balanced literacy,” or “whole language” approach, is based on the idea that learning to read should be as natural as learning to talk. If you put children in a “book-rich” environment, they will learn to read in their own time, taking their cues from pictures and context. Indeed, while this method works for many children, it doesn’t for far too many of our most vulnerable children, including an estimated one in seven with learning disabilities. Complete Article HERE