For the past two years of the pandemic, schools have been struggling with high numbers of infections, new regulations and staff failures. The children are the ones who suffer.
At the Kastelbergschule in Waldkirch (Emmendingen district), the information evening for parents to come for first graders has now been cancelled, and the open day of the community school also falls victim to the pandemic. “Normality was and is no longer available, the virus will continue to determine our everyday life,” says the School home page. The school management has had to adjust the hygiene plan around ten times in the last two years, and new timetables and group plans were often created at very short notice over the weekend. But the main thing is that the school continues.
“Especially for elementary school students, school is simply living space and not just learning space.”
Months of school closures as part of a lockdown are particularly bad for the little ones. But they also suffer from wearing masks and the restrictions imposed by the protection against infection, as a visit to the third graders in Waldkirch showed.
Also the Baden-Württemberg State Student Advisory Board focuses on the psychological consequences of the pandemic for children and young people. The experience of “social distancing” has had a negative impact on many people and is unfortunately playing a major role again at the moment, they say. “I think at the moment the students lack confidence,” says Elisabeth Schilli from Offenburg, the spokeswoman for the student council. “The pandemic does not seem to be ending and after one wave has been overcome, the next one comes. This is of course frustrating, as many have the feeling that they are missing out on what is perhaps the most exciting time in their own lives. That is why it is important that politicians now gives priority to the youngest in our society and tries to make life as normal as possible.”
GEW: “If you want open schools, you have to do more.”
That demands the Trade Union Education and Science GEW Baden-Württemberg prayer wheel like. She recently criticized the “back and forth of the politically responsible”, for example in the decision-making leeway for the school management when face-to-face teaching can no longer be maintained because too many teachers are absent. It is essential that all classrooms are equipped with air filter systems, and more test capacity is needed in the laboratories, says GEW state chairwoman Monika Stein in a detailed discussion in the SWR studio in Freiburg.
Considered catastrophic Baden-Württemberg State Parents’ Advisory Board the situation in schools. “Education is now reduced to pushing and checking. If you don’t get it, you’re left lying on the side of the road,” said Michael Mittelstaedt, chairman.
“beWirken” youth study 2021
“This young generation wants to be heard and explicitly taken into account in political decisions” – this is also the conclusion drawn from a current Survey “Youth and the effects of Corona” by the State Center for Civic Education among around 2,750 young people in Baden-Württemberg. However, many of those surveyed also see advantages in online lessons, find distance rules good and name the positive effect of the lockdown on the environment.
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