AMERICA/CHILE - School after the pandemic: strengthening the school-family relationship

Monday, 6 July 2020 education   civil society   school   youth   coronavirus  

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Santiago (Agenzia Fides) - One of Chile's biggest problems is Public Education: for decades, different government systems have managed to propose new methods and different forms to restructure the country's education system. When this task seemed to have taken the right direction, social movements together with student groups mobilized to demonstrate against the authorities and the system that was not working. Now, with the Covid-19 pandemic, the situation has become even more critical.
The director of the San Tommaso d'Aquino Educational Network, Professor Sandra Urrutia Bravo, stressed: "We need to strengthen the school-family relationship and thus develop student autonomy".
"We are in a situation - says the expert - in which education has been hit hard, due to the pandemic. The school environment and the learning environment have changed, forcing educational systems to use technological tools to ensure children and adolescents the right to receive education".
"From the surveys conducted on students and parents, we obtained very relevant information that allowed us to improve, for example, online lessons. We have trained more than 600 teachers in the use of the Classroom platform and we have strengthened the figure of the school headmaster, so that he is the one who accompanies not only the students, but also their families. But we found the lack of autonomy of the students as a problem".
As for the results of the student survey, Professor Sandra Urrutia highlights the following data: 91.8 of respondents are not in favor of returning to face-to-face lessons if the pandemic is not under control, for fear of being infected. But there are other significant problems: 64.8% consider online lessons boring and 55.1% complain of a weak Internet connection.
"This is an important fact, the difficulties derive from the social context in which they live. There are difficulties with the Internet connection, along with the lack of encouragement and boredom".
The conclusion is however positive: "We are accompanied by 150 years of history, experience and, as our Bishops say, 'we will not save ourselves', but we will save ourselves in the community". (CE) (Agenzia Fides, 6/7/2020)


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