It is estimated that approximately 1.2 billion children in the world stopped attending school to try to learn from home. Some specialists conclude that online learning allows greater retention in less time. Covid-19 forced us to modify our processes and routines in an accelerated manner. The pressure of the emergency forces us to make an extraordinary effort, encourages our creativity and detonates talent.
The Government of Mexico implemented the Learn at Home program, to bring education together by all possible means and facilitate the learning of children in Mexico. Free textbooks, content for radio and television and the accompaniment of teachers and parents form a mixture of strategies in the search to give continuity to the process.
Access to knowledge in our country is a sign of the inequality that we live in different areas. Private schools have a large catalog of tools that are accessible only to a few. Public schools are a range where there are extraordinary schools with everything necessary to carry out the educational process, while others lack the bare minimum. The challenge is technological: while there are countries in which almost 100 percent of students have a computer, in our country only half enjoy it and not all have Internet access. These days in which the schools are empty represent a great opportunity to accelerate their rehabilitation and remodeling, seeking that they have everything they need to eventually receive the students again in better conditions.
It is urgent to redouble efforts to strengthen the public schools of our country. That there is no lack of water, electricity, bathrooms, technology, equipment, connectivity and the necessary materials to teach and learn. Education is the most important resource that a child can receive to build their present and future.
A large number of educational institutions strengthened and accelerated their strategies to support their educational processes through technological platforms, as long as the students in their homes had Internet coverage, connectivity and devices to do so.
We are facing a radical change. The school is irreplaceable. The classroom, friends, the teacher and the precise times to concentrate and learn are elements and circumstances that are practically impossible to reproduce at home. Distractors are many and, although parents do our best, our performance is far from what the teacher performs with skill and dedication in the classroom.
If the educational challenge without Covid-19 looked complex, with the appearance of the virus and the need to suspend face-to-face classes throughout the country, the challenge doubled its difficulty. Although a great effort has been made to continue education, the balance and results will be visible in a few years.
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