The pandemic as learning – El Mostrador

Due to the great changes that COVID-19 brought to the world, education was one of the most affected sectors. The need to gather in classrooms and physical contact, often unavoidable, made classrooms the main points of spread of COVID-19. The pandemic caused by the Coronavirus was responsible for changing not only people’s social lives, but also the teaching model. As the pandemic progressed, it became necessary to adapt the teaching system used so that all students could continue the learning process. Thus, in an improvised way and with uncertainty as the protagonist, the videos of the classes were recorded and live streaming began on multiple platforms, so that students could study at home. The disruption caused by the coronavirus pandemic revealed, especially in countries with high poverty rates and strong social inequalities, the physical, cultural, economic and technological barriers that structure society, giving visibility to those who were considered invisible and often forgotten. Different sectors were affected, including schools, which, for their students, are an important space for socialization and peer exchange. However, in the face of school closures, and in contexts with low access to information and communication technologies (ICTs), the possibilities for interaction became practically non-existent, and distance education often failed to respond to this problem.
Two years after the first COVID-19 case, the social and educational implications for the present and the future are analyzed, since the opportunity provided by the pandemic will allow us to rethink formal education and the organization of education systems and move towards a more flexible curriculum in terms of learning and content, where training for solidarity, Respect for the other, tolerance and inclusion play a much more prominent role, to really put the focus of the educational process on learning and on the person of the student. 
 
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Original source in Spanish