Children & Education
The Diary of a Local Mum Making History Well, it’s been quite a trying time for kids and parents alike since I last wrote … yet more homeschooling – yay! I mean, are we homeschooling, office schooling, working from home, parenting at work... does anyone even know any more? I’m hoping by the time you read this that the infection rates will have reduced sufficiently for schools to once again open safely and education will have been returned to the capable hands of the professionals (rather than the confused, distracted parents who are trying desperately to remember what a modal verb is whilst simultaneously replying to a work email, fixing the blummin’ printer – again – and making the 47th snack of the day for their seemingly hollowed-legged offspring). It was during one of these homeschooling sessions, whilst helping my youngest with some history, when it dawned on me that one day many years from now school children would be studying this exact moment (possibly not the precise moment comprising the two of us, head in hands, trying to interpret an historical text, but more the ‘general situation’). Hopefully in a classroom and not on a laptop at the dining room table but you never know. They may be floating round in ‘learning pods’ by then (or, more than likely, a good few of them will still be in the ‘terrapin’ classrooms that have been temporary since I started school in the ‘80s!). Anyway, I digress (see, this is the level of distractedness my poor kids have had to contend with for the last half-term!)…where was I?!? Ah, yes, it occurred to me that we’re living through history. That sounds obvious – all time becomes history when it has passed, but this era is pretty darn significant. Unprecedented, as they keep saying. What we’re experiencing now will be talked about, analysed, recounted and studied for many, many years to come. And that’s just COVID-19. Add Brexit into the mix as well and this has been quite a momentous period to be alive. It’s ironic really, considering it’s probably also been
the most boring and uneventful for many of us on a personal, day-to-day level. I mean, talk about Groundhog Day... it feels like we’ve been stuck on repeat for months! But, momentous it is. And that’s something worth remembering. What we’re trying to stoically deal with, and – more specifically – what our kids are pretty admirably coping with, all things considered, is a truly unique situation. When I mentioned this to my kids they initially looked a bit taken aback and then, a smile crept across their faces. The idea that, while they’re battling against boredom, going stir crazy and trying their hardest to learn from a screen, what they’re enduring is so significant that they’re ‘creating’ history for future children to study in years to come, made it feel that little bit easier. It may be pretty torturous to go through…but imagine having to study it! Those future students will be revising key terms before their exams such as ‘BBC Bitesize’, ‘Google Classroom’, ‘Zoom lessons’ and ‘keyworker school’. They’ll learn that, even at school, sports couldn’t be played, lunches were eaten in classrooms and everyone had to wear a mask in corridors. They’ll study the ‘great toilet roll shortage of 2020’ and analyse what lessons could be learnt from that (there are a lot of lessons to be taken from that, which many people could do with learning sooner rather than later…!) and a famous man called Captain Sir Tom Moore. They’ll learn about lockdowns around the world, daily walks, clapping for keyworkers, PE with Joe, the vaccination programme and, although for us it’s still in the future, they’ll then learn about how people were able to come back together, how families reunited, children once again learned to play and socialise together – not via screens – and, hopefully, how a better world emerged after the pandemic. Stay strong everyone. Let’s hope the next bit of history we make is positive.
By Helen Young
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