Новости

Lynn Davies

(Emeritus Professor of International Education, University of Birmingham, and Co-Director, ConnectFutures)

Writing in September 2020, one’s gaze both backwards and forwards is unprecedented. Because of COVID-19, the past few months have seen an almost unique upheaval globally; the future is unknown but likely to be equally unmatched. Across the world, schools have been closed, people have lost jobs and livelihoods, and the harsh economic and social impact is yet to be evaluated. ”Recovery” and “normality” are only visions.

So how can one even begin to make prescriptions about the role of education - nationally let alone globally? This article offers three imperatives relating to inequality, racism and social action - based mostly on not making things any worse, while possibly sharpening up educational responses to turmoil.

Inequality: Poverty, Displacement, Gender

The first most obvious task centres around inequality. While schools across the world have been trying to maintain some educational contact through online teaching, it is feared that children already disadvantaged will become more so. This includes those who do not have access to the internet, or where a family of eight shares access to the sole mobile phone, or, as always, where there are no books in the home. Libraries are shut. While innovative work is being done through television and radio, this requires electricity. But a UNICEF report says that poverty also seriously affects access to electricity. In seven least developed countries, less than 10 per cent of the poorest households have electricity.

Nonetheless, we can draw inspiration from efforts by organisations such as Africa Educational Trust (AET), who work in the poorest regions of Africa. Where there is connectivity, they have been able to deliver training to head teachers, community education councils and project officers through Zoom, with the training that includes child-centered pedagogy, disaster planning and resilience - including safe back to school measures post-COVID-19 and the protection of vulnerable children and adults.

When there is little connectivity, outreach workers and local networks come into play. In Kenya, parents of school children can visit those outreach organisations by making appointments, using social distancing and hygiene practices, to pick up home learning packs and nutritionally enhanced porridge powder to help them survive.

We have to remember that COVID-19 is not the only disaster in Africa. In Kenya, they have suffered from the worst locust swarm in living memory, devouring all crops; in Somalia, floods displaced over 250,000 people in March and a rise in fighting between armed groups in South Sudan resulted in over 250 deaths in one week in early June. Whilst facing all these challenges, people that AET talk to on the ground still maintain that education is the only way that they see themselves getting out of poverty.

With the economic impact of COVID-19, we will see increased migrations and refugees. Children who are displaced across or within borders already are more likely to have their education disrupted. Refugees can be stigmatised. Girls in conflict-affected settings are even more adversely affected. Organisations such as UNICEF and Mercy Corps have been ‘reimagining’ education and devising a whole array of platforms to deliver lessons and find inclusive learning apps.

But disadvantaged girls are at the most risk. Without the protective school environment, COVID-19 menaces the education, health and wellbeing of girls. With increased poverty among families and limited social protection, parents are increasingly likely to marry their daughters at a younger age as a negative coping strategy. This increases the risk of female genital mutilation (FGM), child marriages and subsequent permanent dropouts from schools. Families in Somalia are taking advantage of school closures to carry out FGM so that girls have time to recover from the ritual, which can take weeks. FGM of course takes place in many other countries, including wealthy ones. The protective role of schools is at a premium. Vigilance is so much more than just stressing handwashing and social distancing.

Nationalism, Racism, Extremism: Spread of Infodemic

Any emergency generates fear, threat and a culture of blame. Conspiracy theories abound regarding who, what and which country is responsible. So educational efforts on media literacy and fake news have a key importance now. Habits of questioning what is read and seeking for evidence become vital. The great problem in these COVID-19 times is that the evidence seems to change, whether face coverings protect people, what exact social distance is necessary and whether a vaccine is possible. There is likely to be the growth of an anti-vaccination movement, as we saw with the measles and, in some countries, polio. Hence, the role of education is to dissuade against kneejerk reactions based on fear and to encourage the scrutiny of available science.

Frighteningly, we are seeing greater explicit racism and prejudice. When the Chinese are blamed for example, there can be attacks on anyone who is or looks Chinese. In the United States, many individuals, particularly those from East Asian backgrounds, are reporting more experiences of racism and xenophobia.

A Canadian survey conducted by Angus Reid in June revealed that almost one-third of Chinese Canadians reported being physically attacked due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In parts of Europe, the racism against Roma communities has increased with accusations of the community spreading disease. This is the collective danger -a license to unleash racism against stigmatized groups.

What is happening is that extremist groups are using the opportunity to spread their hatred. This is part of what the World Health Organisation calls an “infodemic” - the massive spread of misinformation and cybercrime relating to COVID-19.

The Commission for Counter Extremism in the United Kingdom published a report on July 9 revealing how hateful extremists of all spectrums, including neo-Nazis and the far right, have been exploiting the pandemic to launch broad misinformation campaigns that aim to sow social discord. They have promoted racist and xenophobic narratives on social media platforms that aim to incite violence against minority groups, such as urging their supporters to intentionally infect Jewish and Muslim populations with the coronavirus. Other groupings have also been fingered by neo-Nazi groups as a danger; whether refugees, LGTB individuals or elites. Fringe extremist and fringe health groups are mingling dangerously in this infodemic.

Conversely, from Islamist groups, the apportioning of blame is varied. The “crusaders” in the United States are held responsible for a wave or atheism and immorality that has allegedly provoked punishment by God in the form of the pandemic. The Islamic State (ISIS) is telling terrorists to steer clear of coronavirus-stricken Europe. Those who believe they might have contracted the coronavirus are told to stay away from areas under ISIS control in order to preserve the health of others and fulfil the “holy obligation of taking up the causes of protection from illnesses and avoiding them.”

Elsewhere, it was reported in The Conversation (a network of not-for-profit media outlets) that an Islamic State group online publication in India has called for its supporters to spread the coronavirus, saying “every brother and sister, even children, can contribute to Allah’s cause by becoming the carriers of this disease and striking the colonies of the disbelievers.” In Nigeria, according to the British daily newspaper The Guardian, the leader of the Boko Haram breakaway faction of extremists has released an audio clip claiming that his brutal version of Islam was an “anti-virus” while portraying the social distancing measures that have closed mosques an assault on the faith.

Hence, media literacy has an intensified role of enabling young people to work their way through the large number of conflicting messages and politicised strategies on a pandemic. Teachers need support in their role of recognising hate speech and how to report it, whether online or offline. Students also need support in recognising misinformation, open or hidden xenophobia and the tactics of extremists.

Social Unrest and Protest

Finally, we are seeing a confluence of the impact of both COVID-19 and protest movements. The Black Lives Matter movement has swept across many countries, with different facets - from statues of slave traders being toppled, to the exposure of how BAME (black and ethnic minority) people are more likely to be affected by COVID-19 because of historic racism and deprivation, differential access to health care and differential representation as frontline workers in hospitals and care homes.

Foreign Policy magazine, a U.S. news publication, reported that in parts of Latin America, COVID-19 initially dampened down protest movements - for social media cannot replace social mobilisation - but they are likely to re-emerge with increasingly vulnerable and disaffected populations.

A recent analysis by Verisk Maplecroft, a global strategic consulting firm, predicts that protests are likely to surge globally. The economic shock of the pandemic coupled with existing grievances makes widespread public uprisings “inevitable.” Thirty-seven countries, mainly in Africa and Latin America, could face protests for up to three years. But the risk of unrest in other countries including India, Brazil, Russia, South Africa, Indonesia and Turkey are only slightly less acute and still constitute a threat to stability. In 2019, Verisk Maplecroft recorded 47 countries with a significant uptick in protests, including Hong Kong, Chile, Nigeria, Sudan and Haiti. As reported in The Guardian, more turmoil is predicted in 2021.

When schools fully reopen (if they do), this may lead to a new world of unrest. Teachers need to be aware of how protests are triggered, and how to discuss with students both the causes and effects of these protests.

Civil disobedience takes different forms and is responded to in different ways and in different countries; the responsibility of teachers is to try to keep students safe, yet at the same time, not avoid discussions that examine the root of conflicts or grievances and what protests do or do not achieve. This includes warnings about how protest movements get hijacked by extremists: for example, far-right white supremacists have seized the opportunity to mount counter protests about White Lives Matter, with inevitable outbreaks of violence across groups and with the police, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center, a nonprofit legal advocacy organization in the United States.

Vigilance and Action

The intersections between inequality, racism and violent protests have been amplified by COVID-19. The role of schools has become equally intensified. On the one hand, they have an opportunity and responsibility to build on any benign aspect - that many communities have actually demonstrated greater coherence, providing food and supporting each other across ethnic, social class and age lines. Schools and agencies across the globe have had to develop innovative ways of accessing the hardest to reach. Yet major challenges remain and will get worse.

It is vital that schools continue to fight hate speech and propaganda, enable young people to extend skills and vigilance in what they read online, and not thinkingly or unthinkingly contribute to racism, antisemitism and Islamophobia through what they themselves post, what they share or “like.”

Yet the task is more than media literacy. The slogan of the Holocaust Memorial Museum is highly relevant here: “What you do matters; what you fail to do is critical.”

In times of social unrest, informed political and citizenship education becomes central: for example, how to protect the self and others, how to protest against injustice or corruption, and how to create social change without violence.

URL:

(No.8) Plague, Prejudice and Protest > EIU in the World - APCEIU (unescoapceiu.org)