Face to Face Interaction With Teachers and it's lack of due to COVID
The impact of School closure due to COVID has been something that has hugely concerned me on a personal level.
On the bigger picture, the effects of more than 20 months of schools closure remains deeply throughout the world in the near future. Citing Henrietta Fore's article on Barrons, the effects include potential loss of $17 trillion lifetime earning loss among today's schoolchildren, potential of 100 million girls forced into child marriage within next decade and estimated 100 million additional children fallen into multidimensional poverty. (Fore, 2022)
I want to dive into a deeper and simpler level. I grew up in small village in Mustang, Nepal. To put a light in the context, Mustang is one of the most thinly populated and remote district in Nepal. Growing up in the family where the highest formal educated a member has received was not even fifth grade, you struggle to find a role model in your life. Not just within my household, the case was similar in every households in my community. Don't take me wrong, if I were to find a role model in hardworking, kind and happy human being, I would bump into several of them in my day to day life. But is that all I wanted? No, I wanted to end in a better condition than the one I have started with. That meant I had to complete at least high school, I had to earn more than 1.5 to 2 lakhs Rupees ($1,500) in a year and I had to be more knowledgeable in terms of health, world and whatsoever. So, the choices I was put into is either find a role model in them and be just like them or find a role model in someone outside my family and community. Keep in mind I was talking about 2000's, when there were hardly any access of Television in Mustang, not to mention internet - they became accessible just a few years ago. So, the only place where you could find a role model is School.
Throughout my school years, I idolized my teachers. There has been several teachers that I can still name, all of them. They have been my idol, my role model. I either idolized them or the fictional professionals (doctor, pilot, engineer, scientist, etc) they have described. When you idolize your teacher, you try to mimic their day to day activities, the way they talk, the way they walk and eventually the way they think. For, me this was possible because I got opportunity to meet them physically everyday. Today, there are still several millions of school children around the world, who are from underpreviliged community, who doesn't have access to internet and the COVID has snatched their opportunity of idolizing someone within their immediate reach.
I am sure I am not undermining the effects your role model has on you, doesn't matter they are real or fictional, within your immediate reach or you follow them on social media, you read about them on books or heard about them from someone else. When I was within a closed box, school was the place that created a window on the box and teachers are the one I saw on my first peek. So, the face to face interaction with teachers remained invaluable gift of the time.
