Spring has come and the Covid-19 is still with us, filling news reports and front pages. Bodies pile up in hospitals in some countries, in others extreme lockdown measures have enabled the virus spread to be limited, and the medical staff handles the situation bravely. The number of deaths all over the world is soon reaching, as I write, an appalling 200,000, for almost 3 million diagnosed cases. The USA amounts for a fourth of the fatal cases.
Trump’s daily briefing points are an embarrassing comic relief in the tragedy whose ending is still unpredictable. He has now decided these press points are not “worth the effort,” and I do not know whether to be thankful or desolate. At a time when leadership and trust is most crucial, he fails to embody the strength and good sense Europeans relied on so many times in the past. It is like watching a gutter TV reality show, and obviously he knows a lot more about that than about empathy. Erratic syntax, limited vocabulary, references to absurdities like disinfectant injections (justified as sarcasm on the next day, ha ha) and promoting non-tested miracle cures, tantrums whenever the question is not to his liking, blatant lies and disinformation… all of these offer a sharp contrast with many (not all, looking at you, Brazil) governments’ response to the pandemic.
In Switzerland, the federal councillor in charge of the Interior, Alain Berset, has uttered a phrase that is now the epitome of the crisis, “As quickly as possible, as slowly as necessary.” It is true that the idea of not rushing things is quintessentially Swiss, and we are often mocked for our slowness in many matters (driving, speaking or making decisions being a few). However, despite the crisis affecting many entrepreneurs and businesses, small and big alike, the Swiss people stick to this motto and mostly follow the recommendations as strictly as they did following the March 13th lockdown. Some shops are scheduled to open on April 27th, such as garden centres and hair salons, providing yet another test of the popular compliance with emergency circumstances.
Unlike in several American states, there are no demonstrations in the streets accusing our authorities of turning into tyrants or asking for our freedom back. No one here thinks we have been robbed of our liberty or imposed some sort of slavery, which is something I read on an American protester’s placard. As for now, the moment, the streets and parks are empty, in the supermarkets the distance rules are observed and students are patiently waiting for a decision to be made by the federal council about whether or not they will sit their matura exams (= high-school diploma, A levels). The decision will be made and announced this week, as quickly as possible, as slowly as necessary. Younger students will already go back to school on May 11, while high schoolers will have to wait until June 8th.
As a teacher, I am looking forward to going back to school and seeing my students again. It’s been a month and a half now, and distance teaching/learning has become my new routine. I will not linger on how much time I spend adapting resources or modifying documents, trying to reach students who do not reply to emails or submit work for assessment. It is my job, and I do it in whatever conditions this crisis has imposed on us. I do it with my own children at home, waiting for me to entertain and play with them all day long. I do it in between baking and cooking, finger painting and seed planting, floor mopping and laundry folding, hide and seek and car playing. I do it at night, when the kids and my partner sleep. I do it.
Nevertheless, I have observed what I already knew, but did not see in such proportion before: the amount of people who think teachers are lazybones who deserve their pay to be cut down for doing nothing all day and ostensibly bragging about it on their balcony or in their garden while others still go to work as normal. It looks like half the population thinks this way, judging by the comment sections of online newspapers. And they do not use words as kind as the ones I have chosen above to express their grudge. It saddens me to witness this lack of faith and trust in people who, after all, sometimes have to neglect their own children to make sure others’ get their daily or weekly supply of knowledge. I have no access to my school buildings (homeless people have been accommodated in them), and I have over 100 students. I cannot, unlike my children’s primary school teachers, print and send, or deliver, files. We rely on the internet and the distance learning tools and programmes our department has chosen for us to work with. In just a week, we had to learn how to use them, get organised, alter programmes and adapt whatever was planned to this new situation. We did it. Well, to be honest, most of us did.
Yet some parents (and some non-parents) are unhappy about our incongruous right to a salary when working from home. I read a mother accuse teachers of being Nazis in disguise for wanted to send her children to the gas chamber, aka the classroom. Of course I find it unbelievable to have the nerve to compare the final solution with trying to teach kids. But what I also cannot believe is the idea that the teachers have their word to say in this. We are employees, we do what our hierarchy tells us to do, (in that case, going to work), which is why another fraction of the population hates on us right now: we are like the blind SS, obeying orders against the general good. I did not choose the job thinking I was going to get praise and statues, but I am still stupefied by the constant outbreaks of hate and criticism. As teachers, our role today is to maintain a sort of normality, a routine of learning and understanding the world we live in, through remote connection with all these pupils and students whose parents have to worry about other concerns. We try to make sure they are OK, we let them know they can reach out to us in any case, and we reassure them. We give them homework, set up video calls and formative tests so they can move on and feel they are doing their part. We tell them they are important because they are the future, so they need to know things to make the right decision when it comes to them being in charge.
I have already thought about the perfect activity for my students to practise their own criticism skills: I am going to show them a few pictures of these American protesters, and ask them what they think of that. Would they rather live in “dangerous freedom” rather than “peaceful slavery”? Why does the US resonate as some dystopian setting, reminding us alternatively of “The Handmaid’s Tale” when some compare the right to abortion to social distancing and wearing a mask, or “The Giver,” a novel by Lois Lowry presenting a society in which all differences have been suppressed —suggesting they fuel dangerous behaviours and crime—hence leading to a safe, but deprived of any free will, civilization. Inequalities are more than ever palpable amidst the pandemic, with the poorer populations paying too dear a price for their leaders’ lack of action. If only this crisis could make things change for the greater good, and erase some of these differences instead of intensifying them…
The 6th American president, John Quincy Adams, said “If your actions inspire others to dream more, learn more, do more and become more, you are a leader.” In that respect, today’s teachers are much more real leaders than some presidents.