Life + Style: school year and epidemic: “As if I was letting my son go to war”

“We try to be optimistic, not be afraid, and we don’t burden the child with this problem either. We try to get to the point of hygiene issues, we strengthen them (hand washing, disinfection, things like that), but we do not want to be afraid, it is enough to be very nervous. We are making so many changes that we prefer not to leave it in the nursery now, to come home after lunch and finish the homework at home, maybe that can reduce the number of contacts, ” says Anna, the mother of an elementary school boy, when asked if you are afraid of your child. admitted to school in the current situation.

Most parents are somewhat afraid of the situation, but they look forward to education offline, largely because they see that the school has given children a framework, a system, they have lacked community and contact in quarantine and Of course, the fact that Digital education has placed a huge burden on many parents.

Atila, the father of a 13-year-old boy, approaches the situation from another perspective: “I could also push for educational policy to draw lessons and incorporate experience, but that is not a possibility anyway. For us, the quarantine was great, of course I need to work from home anyway, and the boy is already 13 years old, I don’t have to be constantly employed to feed him by hand. But that’s how I came back from the army, we could be together a lot, in the end he learned to schedule his time and got one day off a week for a game, a trip.

It also shows how low the school’s effectiveness is

Explains the father.

Petra, who has a third child, is also more concerned about what will be revealed in the event of a possible new shutdown: whether teachers have improved online education, or whether they just release homework and hope parents will do it again. in the improved form.

Our reader, Eve, has a completely different view than the parents mentioned above: she fears the child and family members to whom she can transmit the virus when she returns from school. The father wrote, see, the schools are not prepared for anything, but she is not surprised because, in her opinion, “the protocol they received is ridiculous, badly thought out and they do not receive any real help to comply with the precautions. At the very least, anyone who can fix it should be able to keep your child at home, and the conditions should be provided for her to learn from home in this case as well.

It is simply incomprehensible that if schools were closed with the number of people infected in March, now how, why would it be safe?

He says, but since he doesn’t want his son to be left behind from his peers, he is forced to let him go to school, but due to the conflicting news, he feels that “he is going to go to war.

Special school year opening, limited entry

As Gergely Gulyás recalled in the latest information from the government: although Emmi did not prohibit the celebration of school year openings, she does not recommend them. Most venues also have a special opening of the school year, with several parents reporting that children can listen to the school radio or television, sit in the classroom, watch the principal’s speech, and / or only freshmen. and eighth grade can attend. One of our readers’ children’s schools will have a “regular” school year opening, but everyone has been asked to wear a mask and keep a foot and a half distance, which is otherwise easy to do in their backyards.

Many capital and rural schools have informed parents that in the current situation only children can enter the institution: parents can go to the patio, gate or gate in the morning, and in the afternoon they can also take their children there, in the afternoon special classes and classes. You can also wait for the children to carry outside the door; Of course, there are schools that do not restrict parental entry, but generally require the use of masks and hand sanitization.

The vocational training classroom system is also changing, several parents spoke that migration between the usual classrooms in the upper grades will be minimal, only physical education and computer classes will be taught in another classroom, and there will be places where they will try not to have many children at the same time. walk the hallways.

There will be a mask in the bag.

We also asked parents if they received any recommendations on whether children should bring a mask or hand sanitizer to school. Most parents complained that the information was late, but they are still trying to adapt to the new rules.

The issue of public transportation divides parents, although the language of stopovers tends to avoid trains and buses. “We are in a fortunate position because we live a 10-12 minute walk from the school. Parents are quite mixed up with the issue, there are also those who do not allow children to take public transport, preferring to go out and walk 40 minutes earlier, ”Gabriella writes, and her letter rhymes with many other opinions. Most people write that they try to get the child to and from them by car, but if they don’t, they don’t shy away from public transportation either.

The measures that schools have introduced in recent weeks are changing: a parent writes that the child’s room is equipped with an air conditioner suitable for air purification, which immediately cost HUF 10,000 extra per person, and almost zeroed the classroom cash register, but several parents wrote about it. that their school was poorly prepared: many received letters that they were trying to do everything possible for the health of children and educators, but there were not many details other than disinfectant cleaning.

Almost all parents agree that it is almost impossible to follow the suggestions that Emmi made and then sent to the directors of the institutions. This mainly meant that pupils had to position themselves as loosely as possible in the corridors and that only so many children could be present in the community spaces at the same time as to maintain a safety distance of 1.5 meters.

“The school cannot prepare for this because there is no room to stay away, there are already peak numbers in a high school, the virus will spread and from there to families. It does not depend on the canteen and the cutlery, a thousand children simply move together, it is even more risky than a week of the book, even if they do not drink alcohol ”, Attila mocks, but others also write: they have crowded classrooms in their schools, and they believe it is impossible to walk away.

The parents we interviewed clearly pack masks and hand sanitizers for the children, and as of now several schools have asked for a sanitizing cloth to allow the children to clean their equipment during the day if necessary, and more parents add: They believe the children they can clean the benches and handles without any problem.

According to a new recommendation from the World Health Organization and UNICEF, children over the age of 12 should also wear a mask against the epidemic, as adults, especially if there is not a distance of one meter between people in their environment and a high risk of infection.

Parents don’t know how to wear a mask: In most schools, upper secondary students have been asked to wear it in hallways and community spaces. Márton, whose children go to a primary school in the capital, told our newspaper: find the instructions a bit vague. “We have been told that they cannot maintain a safe distance inside the building due to the number of people, so a mask is recommended, but not required. Only then do we know exactly how the internal dynamics of a community work, and what may not be mandatory can become an unspoken expectation, ”he explains.

A child of our reader older than 12 will also wear the mask in the classroom, which according to him should be mandatory for anyone older than six who is indoors, even in the classroom. By the way, the father also tries to ask his son for an exemption from physical education, because he believes that in gym classes, changing rooms, it is impossible not to mix different classes.

And if the child coughs

The entire school administration drew the parents’ attention to the fact that only a completely healthy child was sent to school. In a small town in northern Hungary, for example, a statement was made in which parents had to declare weekly that their child had not been in contact with an infected person and would not be admitted to school with a patient. However, this may not work in all cases, the flu is an unknown area for parents. In many places, teachers use a non-contact thermometer to check the temperature of those who come to school and, in case of fever, they notify parents immediately.

“The request that only healthy children go to school cannot be enforced as approx. from October to March they are constantly sticky, etc. Until now we only had to stay home from a fever, nasty cough and vomiting, now who knows what will happen, but half the class will be missed if we take it literally. And of course, if the child coughs, then everyone sounds the alarm to make a crown ”, one parent and another complain to our newspaper:

the request is a whole pumpkin shot.

How will they be determined? Josica sneezes two and evacuates the school? Can they find one infected and have a digital education the next day? It should be seen that there will be situations here. There will be children with the flu in the fall. When there was no coronavirus, it was already a problem: the child kept sneezing, now I keep taking it. She’s already coughing, shouldn’t she take it now? It used to be a nerve-wracking point to decide he’s okay, now he’s clearly ill, but from now on it will be a complete disaster. “

Ildikó believes that “there will be school until the colds caused by the autumn breezes, because if half of the class is missing, since the first sneeze is – rightly – to stay at home, the atrophy of digital education is better, because At least we can all move at the same slow pace. “