Although more than 30 million Mexican students begin their academic year this Monday, the return to atypical and distance classes is reflected in the 70% drop in sales of school supplies and in the capital city center, which used to be a hive and today shines much emptier.
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On Mesones Street in the historic center of Mexico City, which is usually full at this time, there are shops with their curtains down, fearful sellers and buyers who count every penny.
“I’ve been here for six years, but every day it has been going down and now it’s worse, so who knows how to continue. Other years this is very full, right now it is empty, there is nothing. We are just looking at each other and the few people who come, ”says tenant Óscar Juárez.
PANDEMIC EFFECTS
The COVID-19 pandemic, which accumulates 549,734 cases and 59,610 deaths in Mexico, forced the cancellation of face-to-face classes at all levels since March 23, when the so-called National Healthy Distance Day began.
For the school year that begins this Monday, August 24, the Ministry of Public Education (SEP) created the program Aprende en Casa, in which six private and public televisions participate to teach distance classes.
The merchant Natalia Cruz believes that this led to a decrease of up to 90% in her sales, indicating that before she sold an average of 20 notebooks per family and now only five.
“Apart from there being no money, they are not investing much in their school roster. Of course yes (it is due to distance classes), there is no other answer than that ”, she says.
Data from the National Association of Manufacturers of School Supplies and Office (Anfeo) support their perception.
The group reports that the sale of school supplies represents 25,000 million pesos (more than 1,130 million dollars) at this time, but the figure decreased 70%, the equivalent of 18,000 million pesos (almost 815 million dollars).
Meanwhile, about 30,000 providers of school supplies out of a total of 200,000 will close permanently and leave more than 150,000 unemployed, according to the Confederation of National Chambers of Commerce, Services and Tourism (Concanaco-Servytur).
The economic benefit for the return to classes, he adds, will be 25% lower than in 2019.
UNCERTAINTY
The SEP has not defined a date to resume face-to-face teaching, stating that this will not happen until the epidemiological risk traffic light turns green, when in most states it remains orange.
Salesperson Jania de Jesús Flores argues that this discourages parents from buying supplies.
“It is the uncertainty of knowing if the children return to class, if they buy everything at once and perhaps they do not occupy it, because in fact many have told us that they do not buy everything because they will not occupy it, then only the essentials” , he relates.
The place where Jania works closed for three months due to the health emergency and reopened a month ago after the start of the “new normal”.
But the young woman expresses that the fear of contagion still persists, especially in one of the hot spots of the epidemic in the country.
“This in the area, as there are many people, many people are still afraid of being infected, of contracting COVID,” he says.
NEW CHALLENGES
Despite the economic crisis, reflected in an annual fall of 18.9% of GDP in the second quarter, there are families and teachers who are looking for tools to face the new challenges of distance education.
An example is Mayra Ugalde, mother of a preschool girl whom she will now have to educate while doing “home-office” (teleworking).
“It has been easy for me because the prices are affordable, but difficult because we are the ones who have to educate our children at home, and then we have to have all the support material to help them,” he says.
The SEP agreed this week that no teachers lose their income while classes are at a distance.
But even so there are some with the vocation to give an extra, such as Libertad Neri, a primary and secondary school teacher who looks for her own material to improve her work at a distance.
“It is more difficult because we were not used to these new technologies, so learning the new platforms has been somewhat complicated. (…) But once we get hold of the thread, then we run away ”, he says.
