NEWS AND VIEWS
COMMENT
Dear Nadhim Zahawi, children need to express their grief about COVID as well as to ‘catch up’ MICHAEL ROSEN gives his thoughts on how the arts could offer a chance for pupils to express their feelings, post-pandemic
I
had a conversation with a teacher the other day. She asked me what she and other teachers could do to help children with the trauma of the pandemic. This pulled me up sharp. She explained that the children in her class had been deeply affected by what has happened over the last 18 months. She thought some of them were troubled, at times distressed, and that this was showing up in the way they were behaving towards each other. She wasn’t talking about whether the children were ‘behind’ at school; this was about that very unfashionable idea, ‘the whole child’ – not the tested and measured child, evaluated purely on the basis of their performance in tasks set by people in offices far away. When we see children in a school playground or in a park, it’s easy to imagine that the past year and a half has washed over them. They run about, whooping and laughing. This teacher made me think about what might be going on under the surface. Let’s ask ourselves some hard questions; how many school-age children have had direct experience of losing a sibling, a parent, a grandparent, a close relative or carer? How many children are close friends with a child who has had that experience? How many school children have had direct experience of people suffering the long-term effects of COVID? A hundred thousand? Two hundred thousand? More? I ask myself, and you, do we think that the effect of this can be ignored? We are, after all, talking about the psychological impact of widespread bereavement.
08
February 2022
