OPINION - ARGUABLY, the country has never been in a collective mental health crisis, certainly not one of such intensity, as now during the Covid-19 pandemic.
Anxiety, despair and fear have enveloped all of us on multiple levels.
Perhaps the most affected is education, where, by all accounts, things are falling apart and the centre cannot hold.
One accepts that the Department of Basic Education is a complex one.
It has many balls to juggle at once, but what is difficult to accept is the apparent arrogance and the lack of due consideration by both the minister and her deputy for pupils, parents and
teachers with their own stress and worries in a scenario that is especially unsettling.
Recent media briefings did little, if anything, to give recognition to these groups as people who deserve empathy, consideration and respect.
They have to come to terms with a whirlpool of anxieties in an overwhelming situation.
In fact, the media briefings did quite the contrary.
I recently conducted online and telephonic interviews with matric pupils in Port Shepstone, Verulam, Pietermaritzburg and Empangeni about their concerns.
Below are excerpts from the interviews.
“This was the year I waited for since I entered the high school gates. It began on a high note. I invested hard work, expecting good results, a glamorous matric farewell, saying goodbye and going into a career. I didn’t expect this mess.”
“To the minister, I am more panic-stricken now. I am a good pupil. But I am frightened to lose my life. I think the class of 2020 deserves some sort of comfort, understanding and therapy even before going to school.”
“This is an abnormal year. How can the minister want a normal curriculum and exam? What will happen to the symbols I was hoping for? I don’t have internet and while absent, I struggled on my own.”
“I worry that the pressure and demand to prepare us for the final exams will become too much to bear. Also, I am afraid about my life and that of our teachers, my friends and family. While I try to keep my spirits up, I have many worries and anxieties”
A matric teacher from Pietermaritzburg said: “I feel guilty at what will happen now to my learners whom I brought up from grades 10 to 12. They have become like our own children.”
While the minister is focused on the technicalities related to the reopening of schools, the real fears of pupils and teachers at the end of that almost cold and factual planning chain seem forgotten.
If the minister’s determination to get the academic year restarted, no matter what, is based on any notion that
pupils will achieve and teachers will perform as expected, or within their potential, then the minister is gravely mistaken.
Learning and performance, even at the best of times, can be hindered
by varying degrees by a number of factors.
In this group, physical or mental disabilities or socio-economic struggles come easily to mind.
But mental health factors, while usually presenting no external manifestation, can be an internal overload.
Not only will the capacity for learning and performance be eroded, but self-esteem and confidence will go out the window.
Apart from the danger of becoming infected, pupils have the dice loaded against them from an academic point of view.
Even in ordinary non-Covid-19 years, we had pupils, especially at the matric level, come apart under the stress and panic of tests and
examinations.
Self-harm and suicide as by-products of mental health complications are sadly well known.
If we now add to the stressors of a compressed year, a curriculum that is not trimmed, a resultant inordinately heavy teaching and learning programme, higher than usual worries over symbols, the fear for life and an examination that is not appropriately adjusted to match the time lost already, we have a powder keg attached to a lit fuse.
It would be foolhardy, especially now, for the Department of Basic Education not to have therapeutic programmes to reach out to pupils and teachers before the academic programme starts.
Programmes focussing, inter alia, on trauma counselling, lending a sympathetic ear to pupils’ worries and fears, easing the burdens upon troubled shoulders and adjusting classroom pedagogy to compensate for their deep-seated
anxieties and fears should be mandatory.
Teachers themselves are not immune to grave anxieties and concerns,
not only for themselves but for their pupils.
By the matric year, teachers and pupils have developed a bond based upon mutual understanding and trust.
The explanation by the minister that the Grade 12s will have the school to themselves, classes will be split and they will provide new teachers, will simply not work.
New and uninitiated teachers may be brought in to fill the gaps, thereby confounding pupils even more.
If the mental health of our teachers is not given due consideration and treating them as mere functionaries continue, we may see the beginning of an exodus.
The failure by the department to institute such proactive programmes should not dissuade schools from starting this on their own. In fact, schools should have learner and educator support teams in place already.
Making a cold start with curriculum teaching, without such a comforting and therapeutic programme, would be insensitive regarding
teachers.
For pupils, it would be akin to trying to fill empty mugs with facts, hoping that miraculously deep understanding, appreciation and application of information would occur.
The lives, fate and future of our pupils and teachers are too precious to be trifled with.
Govender is an educational psychologist, former circuit manager and deputy director of special needs education