How to be a student in pajamas or a student without classmates? How to experience falling in love for the first time? Through the Internet? Aren’t these valid questions?

Fadil Lepaja

I continue with persistence and care to look after the clothes, school uniform, the tasks/lessons schedule while packing the books according to the schedule in order lighten the giant schoolbag that my teenager is supposed to carry every day on her fragile shoulders. The digital book may be useful, but she thinks that online teaching itself is not enough. School at home? No, thank you!

Another mother explains how she follows the same class for who knows how many times, not because she has failed the class, but because she is following her child’s steps through elementary education.

She says that she reads on the internet, always from the best authors.

We are living in this confusion created by the pandemic and by the technology. I grew up in a time when the good student used to learn in school or the city library, while nowadays technology offers opportunities for long-distance learning during the pandemic in order to ensure the necessary social distance among children. However, the old system does not function without the school bell and a bunch of students around. Where will tens of thousands of teachers get their salaries from?

One mother complains about the technology, as much as she complains about the virus which she believes is a product of biotechnology. Another one complains that the old model is inadequate for the pandemic measures. “Is it worth the concern and the danger to go and sit in front of a teacher, together with 30-40 other children, in order to gain knowledge which can nowadays be found in every communication device?” another one asks, without even lifting her eyes from her iPad.

Isn’t she right? Google, Youtube and other applications bring eminent educationalists and scientists in front of you in your home, while you are still lying in your bed, having a “digital” drink and getting educated. Education nowadays returns as a mother’s task (or maybe even a father’s task, considering that nowadays during the election campaigns there are political parties which promote “motherhood” regardless of the gender).

How can you be a teacher if there are no classes or students? If the bell does not ring or if there are no winter breaks? How to be a student in pajamas or a student without classmates? How to experience falling in love for the first time? Through the Internet? Aren’t these valid questions?

The virus and the pandemic did not bring us the confusion. The bureaucratic system is not finding a solution to reform the education. If they used the best technology and organization skills, the system would achieve a much better result. The children would not get that much tired and the parents would not have to take the same classes several times. Having a child in school is like a having  second full-time job. “And what if you have two children?” another mother complains that she is going mad from her children being inside the house the whole day, while she is the one that does their homework and sends it through the e-mail!

 

Fadil Lepaja, writer, columnist for print media in Kosovo, Albania and North Macedonia, political commentator for Albanian and Serbian language-based media in Kosovo, Serbia, etc.