Reopening schools before virus is defeated may be very unwise

Friday, World Day Against Child Labour was marked in a very muted fashion.

As is the trend these days, it was celebrated virtually, presumably because there was no other way it could safely be done without the participants infecting one another with the novel coronavirus.

 In any case, people and governments have more urgent matters of life and death to worry about considering the devastation the virus has brought in its wake.

Nevertheless, there is a reason the world should be reminded that a child has certain rights that cannot be ignored, among them proper formal education.

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 Obviously, no child can learn if he or she is slaving away in a mine, tea plantation, or out there in the field grazing livestock. Children of a certain age bracket, say from five to 16, should be in school. But they are not.

In most parts of the world, learners have been at home for half the year now.

In Kenya, schools and other institutions of learning were closed in mid-March, as were other places where people congregate including churches, mosques, stadiums, cinema halls, bars and hotels.

This was one of the measures taken to ensure the highly infectious virus was not allowed free rein.

It is difficult to keep a safe distance when crowds mingle in social environments, considering that the virus is mostly transmitted through minuscule droplets and is also airborne.

However, common sense dictates that people cannot survive for too long in a state of full or even partial lockdown, which is why there has been an understandable clamour for the reopening of these places of business and leisure.

REASONABLE DISTANCE

Government has already conceded that it is possible to put in place measures that will allow meaningful social interaction provided people keep a reasonable distance from one another, but it has wisely concluded that bars and other entertainment joints are not among them.

There is a reasonable possibility that places of worship will soon reopen.

It is expected that worshippers will seek solace, pray and praise without endangering fellow worshippers with unnecessary intimacy.

By now, most adults know that one can worship God without needing to embrace her neighbour on the church steps. If the necessary sanitary measures are adopted then all will be well.

But none of these things can be said about the proposal to reopen schools.

During his state of the nation address on June 6, President Uhuru Kenyatta directed the Ministry of Education to “expedite consultations” on how schools can reopen without compromising the health status of children, and to formulate a calendar to that effect.

Apparently, the Education Response Committee on Covid-19 had recommended that this be done before September.

HURRIED REOPENING

There is no doubt that members of this committee gave deep thought to the report they drew up, but it is not clear whose advice they heeded, for the main stakeholders, parents, seem to be dead set against a hurried reopening.

 Indeed, the stark truth is that this country is not ready to do so.

When you get to a point where long-suffering parents would rather keep their troublesome offspring at home instead of releasing them to potentially dangerous environments, then it would seem the work the committee did was a waste of time.

The only entity that concurred with that assessment was the Kenya Union of Post-Primary Teachers, which called for a phased reopening to accommodate national examination candidates, arguing that long closures lead to a rise in dropout rates and other forms of deviancy.

The union may have a point, but its counterpart, Knut, is adamant that schools should only reopen once the viral infections are contained.

On this, Education Cabinet Secretary George Magoha seems to concur. Said he: “The government will never sacrifice the health of our children [for the sake] of an education that can wait to be offered at a later time when the safety and health of children can be guaranteed.”

COVID-19 INFECTIONS

Thus, if the committee recommended September as the most auspicious month to reopen schools, they must have forgotten one thing: According to the Ministry of Health, this is also the month when the Covid-19 infection rate will peak. How does one reconcile the two contradictory realities?

How do you force a 10-year-old to wear a face mask or to keep social distance from his playmates?

How do you ensure that he washes his hands and stops touching his face? Any attempt to reopen schools before the infection rate dwindles will backfire. South Korea and France, whose governments thought they had cornered the virus, had to beat a hasty retreat on this matter.

We should learn a lesson from them instead of forcing children to learn the hard way what a viral infection really means.

 Mr Ngwiri is a consultant editor;