Paying the price (14/03/20 10:44:49)
Restaurants, performing artists, personal caretakers suffer. But perhaps worse: When schools are closed, children from poor families suffer the most. Large families that live in small flats: how is electronic schooling going to work if there are three or five children who are to share a few rooms together with all the normal activities of the home?
When I was at school (1958-70), the school was full of well-educated teachers, and the goal was to eliminate social differences stemming from different social backgrounds. Children with educated parents and children of working-class parents went to the same schools and learnt their reading and maths and sciences and languages at approximately the same pace. Nowadays, more youngsters are in schools because jobs for 15-18-year-olds have disappeared. So they go to schools. So standards have sunk. Parents with resources look after their children. parents without resources, cannot - and some even have aversion against learning. So the schools don't alleviate social handicaps any more. And children who have their own room, have much better conditions for learning than those who have to share a small flat with many siblings.
So it is urgently necessary to use large resources to help the poor part of the population in this crisis. And hopefully that help can be extended beyong the COVID-19 crisis.
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