Education in times of pandemic

Between 1918 and 1920 a pandemic caused by the misnamed “Spanish Flu” killed 50,000,000 million people. The pandemic, which spread in three different waves, coexisted until 1919 with World War I, which would end that year leaving behind 20 million victims. The effect of those two tragic events did not only have a destructive effect on the merely demographic. The economy suffered from the wear and tear of war spending but also from the alteration of migratory flows caused by the disease and, of course, the direct effect on labor force that the annihilation of 2.7% of the world’s population had.

Despite this, in 1920 the world began a new process of reconstruction and economic consolidation based on a new industry that appeared in the light of scientific discoveries and the efficiency produced by the production needs of the war.

In the field of culture, the war also meant a huge stoppage. The early development of the so-called avant-garde (in painting, literature or architecture) came to a halt during the war, but it would flourish from 1921 onwards and it was here to stay. A revolution that also reached popular culture globally that would embrace Jazz (the most influential genre), a revolution in the performing arts, in entertainment and, of course, in education.

In Italy, Maria Montessori would begin to develop her educational method (The Montessori Method) at the end of the nineteenth century. Between 1912 and 1917 she published “The Montessori Method” and “Development of the Montessori Method” where she explained her special educational philosophy based on the physical care of the student (hygiene, health, etc.) and the enhancement of their enormous learning potential which, according to the Italian, is present regardless of the socioeconomic situation of the student.

Maria Montessori would open the doors of the United States with the publication of her first book that caught the attention of Graham Bell, who became a defender of the educational method and the co-founder of the American Montessori Society, and of the administration of President Woodrow Wilson.

Here, in Spain, a new pedagogy promoted by Francisco Giner de los Ríos and Joaquín Costa would materialize in a new approach to teaching and in the creation of the Institución Libre de Enseñanza that already in the 20s would have a giant influence on the explosion of Spanish culture and a definitive influence on the Generation of 27.

In England or the United States, since the end of the World War, the need to train generations hit by the conflict began to develop. In addition, after the pandemic, the return of soldiers home caused a boom in births that meant that primary schools had to be reformed and institutes and universities were promoted publicly to meet the needs of post-war youth who wanted to learn and access higher education. The so-called “progressive education” was the one that would mark the educational development that would later be essential for the hard years that would be the crash of 29 and the Second World War later.

Currently, it is too early to consider the damage that the COVID-19 pandemic will pose to the economy and the paradigm shifts that could be caused by the effect of a planet that, for the first time since the crisis of 1973, is living in a clear situation of regression that has dwarfed the enormous crisis of 2008.

The objective is twofold: to stop the infection and to minimize the effect of the harsh measures that have been taken to stop the infection. In a few days we have seen how the social mechanics were interrupted, a screeching of the gears of the mechanism that has completely slowed down and that has led us to stay at home for as long as possible and to suspend all work activity that is not considered essential.

Education has been one of the activities most affected by this abrupt change in the situation. Classes continue to be face-to-face and neither students nor teachers can attend the centers. That is why, just as teleworking has been favoured in many companies, the central administration and the regional administrations have launched plans so that students can continue their education which, if we already knew that it was going to be one of the important assets for the years to come, is now completely essential.

The Community of Madrid was the first to suspend classes on March 9. The measure, which began with the doubt about whether teachers and non-academic staff would have to go to the centers despite there being no students. The measure was suspended within 24 hours to make effective, for 15 calendar days, the establishment of online classes through the platform offered by Google and the support of companies such as Microsoft that has ceded its digital platforms to that of the community called EducaMadrid that, since the 17th of this month, It supports a daily traffic of 650,000 visits and a parallel digital renewal to ensure that, in the days following the reestablishment of normal classes or in the event that the quarantine period is extended, the system can function in the best possible way.

In Valencia, the Ministry of Education has launched the Mulan Plan that articulates 4 educational portals that are divided by school units so as not to suffer collapses that, in these first days of use, are still quite common. The portals will serve students of ESO, FP, Basic and Baccalaureate.

In other communities, such as Aragon, the experience is proving to be highly satisfactory because the region has already been preparing its teachers to teach non-face-to-face classes for some time.

In the university environment , private institutions such as the IE School or the Camilo José Cela University have launched their own virtual campuses where they want to offer classes to all their students. For their part, Madrid’s public universities (Complutense and UAM) have decided to delay the calendar by fifteen days and take advantage of these early stages of the coronavirus crisis to adapt to their high number of students and solve the problems posed by careers that require face-to-face activities ranging from Biology to Fine Arts.

It is expected that, in the coming dates, an action plan will be defined because the premise of the institutions is not to leave any student behind and it is expected that about a third of the student body does not have their own internet connection to access online courses.

The rest of the public universities in the rest of Spain have also decided to follow these steps and suspend their classes until March 27 (some later) in anticipation of being able to define plans to absorb the largest number of students and solve the thorny issue of face-to-face activities.

All educational platforms, whether they are schools, institutes or universities, need a series of essential features:

• The first thing is to have the necessary technology. Servers with sufficient capacity to support the flow of information and simultaneous access of hundreds of thousands of students. Let us remember that, to date, online education had been proposed as a support and complement tool to face-to-face education, or for students who could not attend classes. In other words, the educational platforms installed are not designed to support 100% of the students and more modest objectives were set.
• As is understandable, online classes pose a challenge for students, which cannot be controlled by teachers, and also for teachers who are quickly training in methodologies more suitable for this type of distance education. The reorganization of student groups and the structuring of the contents in an attractive way that captures attention and the proposal of continuous interaction is absolutely essential.

Beyond that, in our country, all schools have signed agreements with Microsoft to use their software and Microsoft Teams. Others such as Blackboard or Moodle are also very popular.

The challenge of achieving an education that continues to function despite the circumstances, that the learning cycle does not stop and adapts to the temporal circumstances, but that, of course, is already defined to reach a greater number of students is more necessary than ever. Surely the will of all of us to pass soon the nightmare will be the best lever to make everything move again, if not normally, then quickly enough to be effective and useful.