DAILY OPINIONS

Minister Selçuk says, “We’re opening the schools but don’t send your kids”

Although nothing has been done to tackle the above points since September 21 when first grade started to be taught face-to-face, new grades are now beginning face-to-face teaching.

Minister of National Education Ziya Selçuk proclaimed, “There will be a transition to the second stage in face-to-face teaching” at a meeting he held on Tuesday October 6. The minister’s announcement heralds the initiation of face-to-face teaching from October 12 for 2nd, 3rd, 4th, 8th and 12th grades along with all grades of village schools and classes for special needs students!

In his announcement, Minister Selçuk said distance education and face-to-face teaching would be conducted together and pupils would be at school two days a week. Indicating that pupils whose parents were unwilling to send them to school would not be treated as absent, Selçuk said that, nevertheless, these pupils would be subject to testing on the educational programme of the grade they were in.

Selçuk’s pronouncements have it that, thanks to the measures the Ministry of National Education has taken in the field of education, rapid progress is being made with face-to-face teaching in all schools and classes under pandemic conditions.

WHAT CRITERIA HAVE BEEN SATISFIED FOR A TRANSITION TO FACE-TO-FACE TEACHING?

However, all involved persons and sectors, from educators to parents, and from educational trade unions to experts who are monitoring endeavours in this field, are criticizing the minister’s statements and posing questions that officials, not least Ziya Selçuk, need to answer.

Education and Science Workers' Union General Education Secretary Özgür Bozdoğan, assessing the minister’s announcement for our paper, rattles off his questions: “Our question is: What has changed? Has the number of cases fallen? Has the epidemic finally been brought under control? Have the criteria set by the World Health Organization been satisfied?

Not a finger has apparently been lifted to address the demands educationalists and educational trade unions have raised by way of the steps that must be taken to facilitate the continuation of education under pandemic conditions such as:

  • providing additional funding for education,
  • improving schools’ physical conditions and opening an adequate number of classes,
  • ensuring the adequacy of educational staff,
  • employing staff assigned to health and cleaning functions at every school, and
  • making school buses safe.

Although nothing has been done to tackle the above points since September 21 when first grade started to be taught face-to-face, new grades are now beginning face-to-face teaching.

Apart from all this, with Minister Selçuk asserting that the problems relating to face-to-face teaching have been surmounted, the concerns of parents, pupils and educationalists have been further intensified by the way he has fobbed off until the indeterminate future questions such as:

  • How classes will be divided,
  • How educators will attend divided classes,
  • What steps have been taken to overcome online educational problems (internet, Educational Informatics Network, tablets, etc.), and
  • How and when 500,000 tablets will be distributed.

WHAT IS THE MINISTER REALLY SAYING?

Minister Selçuk had said in one of his previous announcements, “Those testing positive for Covid-19 and their contactees will continue school if they have no clinical symptoms.”

By saying in his statement on Tuesday, in turn, “Parental consent is very important to us when it comes to starting face-to-face teaching. At this stage, parents wishing to do so will send their children to school and those that do not will be granted flexibility. Under these circumstances, our pupil will not be treated as absent. However, our pupil who is not sent to school must continue distance education because our pupils are subject to testing on the educational programme of the grade they attend come what may,” he articulated the connection between face-to-face teaching and online education!

Taking stock of the two successive comments he has made in an environment in which there is such intense chatter about a second and third “peak” or “wave” of the pandemic and the importance of “mask, distance, cleanliness” measures, and speculation mixes with truth, what Minister Selçuk is calling on parents to do is as follows: “We will carry ‘Covid-19 positive’ pupils and those not back and forth on the same buses and teach them mixed together in the same classes. And you will either send your child to school or not. It is up to you!”

Put plainly, what this formulation amounts to is, “If you have got your head screwed on and the means to do so, you will not sent your kid to school for face-to-face education!”

DALLYING WITH HERD IMMUNITY

Along with the months-long failure for any face-to-face teaching-related measure to be taken, the decision to enable Covid-19 positive testees and their contactees to carry on attending school clearly shows that:

Combatting the coronavirus has been tied in with “herd immunity,” and

The pandemic has been and will be used to widen the gulf in favour of the wealthy in the field of education, given that pupils of private schools which employ both online education and face-to-face teaching more effectively will be subjected to examination tested on the same educational programme.

As the process unfolds, it will become more abundantly apparent that the single-man administration is going to use the pandemic more effectively to religify and privatize education.

(Translated by Tim DRAYTON)


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