Fernando Reimers, Ford Foundation Professor of the Practice in International Education at Harvard University, discusses educational challenges and innovations sparked by the Covid-19 crisis in Latin America and the Caribbean.
Resources:
Leading Education Through COVID-19: Upholding the Right to Education
Leading Educational Change During a Pandemic: Reflections of Hope and Possibility
Una calamidad educativa Aprendizaje y enseñanza durante la pandemia de COVID-19
June:
We're talking today to Fernando Reimers. He's the Ford Foundation professor of the Practice of International Education. He's also Director of the Global Education Initiative and the International Education Policy Program at Harvard University. Welcome, Fernando.
Fernando Reimers:
Thank you for having me, June. It's good to talk with you and I'm delighted to know that DRCLAS has this series of podcasts.
June:
Well, you're the first one was going to be talking about education, which is really in some dire straits right now. I just read a report by the World Bank that says that about 120 million of the region school age children have already left or were at risk of losing an entire academic year. Given that panorama, what do you think is the biggest challenge going forth in Latin America and the Caribbean?
Fernando Reimers:
That's right. The loss is going to be more profound than that. I have spent the last year doing research on the educational impact of COVID. The picture is still evolving, but I think that there are three great potential consequences of COVID for education. One, as you said, that students not only will not have learned as much as they would have otherwise, but that in fact, they may regress to levels before the levels they were in and that can be profound.
Fernando Reimers:
I can tell you that for Sao Paolo, where there are some figures available, that descent is equivalent to two grade levels for language and three grade levels for mathematics, so very serious. The second consequence, which is very, very important also, is that some students are never going to come back to school. It's not just that the students who come back are going to be in a worse place than they were before the pandemic.
Fernando Reimers:
It's that because students have disengaged and because the pandemic has impacted families in numerous ways, not just through education, this is a very regressive pandemic impact. Some kids have not been able to engage with school at all, and life has gotten complicated and they will be unable to come.
Fernando Reimers:
You put those two things together and it's easy to anticipate that for Latin America, this pandemic could very easily wipe out anywhere between 10 to 20 years of progress. It's like it would erase the last 10 or 20 years in terms of the progress the region had made. The third consequence is this pandemic didn't hit education systems in a vacuum or education systems that were doing great.
Fernando Reimers:
There were some preexisting problems that were pretty serious in terms of children not learning enough of the curriculum in terms of not learning things that were relevant to their lives. Not only has the pandemic made it harder for governments to address that during the pandemic, but it is going to compound those challenges in the future.
Fernando Reimers:
One of the impacts this pandemic is likely going to have is a fiscal impact, in the capacity of both governments and individuals to support education. You may remember the debt crisis of the 1980s, which basically wiped out a decade of human progress, that's why it was called The Lost Decade. I see this pandemic could very easily produce a lost decade simply through its fiscal impact.
Fernando Reimers:
Then of course, that austerity is also affecting individuals because this pandemic, the world over has hit the poorest members of society the most and Latin America remains one of the regions in the world with very high levels of inequality. It is to be expected that in that region, in that context, this is just worsening pre-existing challenges.
June:
Could you talk a bit about the digital divide and how specifically that has affected education during COVID?
Fernando Reimers:
Well, the digital divide in Latin America has three components to it. One, is that access to infrastructure, at least in terms of internet-based technologies that would allow you to have web 2.0 or more interactivity, access to connectivity and to devices is inequitably distributed, we knew that. The internet is not like clean water or electricity, sadly, whereas it should be in the 21st century.
Fernando Reimers:
You cannot participate economically or politically in the 21st century, if you don't have access to a device and connectivity. A lot of people don't have access so, that has been the first barrier. The second barrier has been a barrier in the skills, on the part of students, as well as teachers to use the technology that they have access to more proficiently.
Fernando Reimers:
Not just the technology, but the capacities that would help people cope. For example, the capacity for self-directed learning, the capacity to set personal goals, and to pick up some books and to study on your own. Education systems haven't done a great job educating everywhere, by the way, this is not just Latin America, this is also true in the United States.
Fernando Reimers:
It's also true in Spain, it's true in many different regions. They haven't done a great job developing that capacity for autonomous learning, for independent learning, so in this context where you cannot be in your classroom every day with the teacher guiding you, a lot of people are lost, but they are lost, not just because they don't have the devices, but because they don't have that autonomy to learn independently.
Fernando Reimers:
Having said that, there has been a lot of effort and a lot of ingenuity on the part of governments and civil society organizations in Latin America to do the best that was possible, given the circumstances, given the reality that this was an unforeseen event that hit the region.
Fernando Reimers:
One of the things that I have been studying are innovations that have happened. Frankly, there are a lot of very exciting things in Latin America that the United States frankly, could learn from. Anyway, this has been a real calamity, there is no other way to put it, a global calamity.
June:
Could you give me a couple of examples of this type of innovation?
Fernando Reimers:
Absolutely. Let me first tell you how I came to become interested in that, because it sounds morbid that one, we tried to look for goodness in the middle of such tragedy. Let me explain how it came to be interested in that. Before the pandemic hit, around February I think, I was planning a trip to Mexico.
Fernando Reimers:
I was in conversation with one of my colleagues here, Rifat Atun, the professor at the School of Public Health, with whom I collaborate, who's an epidemiologist. He said, "You know what, you're saying you're going to go to Mexico for spring break, you should cancel the trip." I said, "Why?" "Well, have you been reading about these viruses?"
Fernando Reimers:
I said, "Yeah, but it's mostly in Asia." He said, "Well, this will become a pandemic. It's not whether, it's when. Airports and airplanes are not good places to be during a pandemic." I began to look on the facts and I realized that Rifat was right. My next thought was, "Oh my goodness, "How are we going to teach? We have never been in a situation where we cannot meet to teach."
Fernando Reimers:
I reached out to colleagues at UNESCO, at the World Bank, at USAID, at the OECD. I said, "Listen, is there something we can do because, I just realized we're going to see the worst educational crisis in a century since the pandemic of 1918." When personnel responded right away was the director of education of the OECD, Andreas Schleicher, who I had sent my email within 15 minutes, he said, "Let's talk on the phone."
Fernando Reimers:
He said, "I agree with you, what do you think we should do?" I said, "Andreas, I have no idea, but I think there's going to be a nightmare." I said, "Well, why don't we do a global survey and we administer that to ministers and decision-makers, and even civil society organizations and we ask them, "What plans have you made to continue to teach them this pandemic? What are the challenges that you anticipate?"
Fernando Reimers:
We designed that survey and when the WHO announced the pandemic, the next day, we released our survey, and the week after that, we had a first report. When you read it now, you realize this was [foreign language 00:09:07] It's all there, we basically said what was going to happen. People knew it a year ago. They said, "This is going to increase every possible inequality that we know of. We have no plans, we don't know how to teach. This is going to create mental health challenges and so on."
Fernando Reimers:
Anyway, we published that report and then we began to host virtual meetings like this. We did a lot of them in Latin America and people came in large numbers. I had to get a special Zoom account to have 5,000 people in these meetings. I know why they were coming because we were all driving in the night. I don't know if you remember what it felt like last March or April.
Fernando Reimers:
We didn't have vaccines. We didn't know how long it was going to take. We're just hunkering down. Harvard had just announced, "We're going to finish the semester remotely. We don't know what we're doing next year." This was something we hadn't seen, like we're in the Titanic and we all realized that ship is sinking and we don't know what we're going to do.
Fernando Reimers:
The more I participated in those conversations, the more I realized this is not very... There were good things happening. I remember, for example, a meeting we held in Chile. We had the vice minister of education and we had a rural teacher, and the rural teacher says, because these meetings were giving people an opportunity to talk to each other.
Fernando Reimers:
She says to the vice minister, "Do you realize that we are the country with the highest levels of violence against women and that this is increasing? You are pushing this emphasis on tests and on the assessment and it's making a bad situation worse because it is increasing stress in the homes and it's increasing violence in homes?" That was the world April of 2020.
Fernando Reimers:
In that context, I regroup with Andreas and I said, "Andreas, I don't know whether we're doing any good or bad because we're amplifying these very, very green picture." I said, "Why don't we start looking at people who are trying to do something good, no matter how little it is. Let's just put a spotlight on that because people need hope. We have to show that it's possible to do something."
Fernando Reimers:
Through our networks, I first reached out to my graduates, and my students that I put together a team and through our network we said, "Let's look at who's doing something." We began to write short cases, 10 cases, and then people began to talk about them, and that was-
June:
Give me those 10 cases.
Fernando Reimers:
I'm going to give you examples. I know it's a long answer to your question "Give me examples." I wanted to give you the context and then we added up other people. We've done 100 and I'll be happy to send you a link if you to post this, in case people want to see it. I'm going to give you some examples of innovations.
Fernando Reimers:
First example, an organization in Chile that works with street children and these organizations, these are kids who have had very bad experiences with adults. They have issues with trust with adults and part of this program, it's a life skills programs, it's a program of the Society of Jesus, the Jesuits. "They said, we cannot disappear from the lives of our kids, these kids have very difficult lives. The adults in our program are one of the few people they trust."
Fernando Reimers:
They created a program with WhatsApp and through WhatsApp, they develop a routine to check in with these kids every day. They had psychologists and social workers whose job it was to see who was responding. If someone wasn't responding, they put a search party to figure out what's happened to that person. What they try to do is very simple, but very important.
Fernando Reimers:
They tried to remind these young people every day, "We're here for you. We care for you. How are you doing?" That's all. Then on top of that, they were teaching. They figured out a way to distribute self-instructional manuals through WhatsApp. Imagine it, through WhatsApp, which apparently you can use even if you don't have an internet connection.
Fernando Reimers:
You get to some hotspot and you can access that. That's an example. I thought, "Wow, what an amazing." We wrote a case study. I wrote a case study with a colleague who was involved with that program. Another example of civil society doing great things, you know the organization Enseña Chile, it's part of a big global network like Teach For America.
Fernando Reimers:
The day the government of Chile announces we're going to shut down the schools, there are two Enseñas, two of these young people who say, "What's going to happen to our kids?" They don't say, "What's the government going to do?" They say, "What's going to happen to our kids and what are we going to do about it?" These kids, there are 60 some networks like that around the world, and they're all in communication.
Fernando Reimers:
They all get newsletters where they learn what others are doing. They had just seen in the newsletter that Teach for Nigeria had begun to use recordings like podcasts distributed through WhatsApp to teach math and English. They said, "Well, if our colleagues in Nigeria can do that, we can do that." They recorded these lessons, math and language lessons.
Fernando Reimers:
Apparently they were funny, they were very funny. You should interview those people because within a week, those lessons had gone viral. As you know, in Enseña for Chile like Teach for America, works in marginalized communities. Within a week, apparently everyone in that place is listening to these podcasts on math and Spanish.
Fernando Reimers:
The mayor to can interest and he said, "What going on?" He listened to that and he was participating in a convening with other mayors of cities with similar challenges and he just shared this practice. Within a couple of weeks, 200 mayors had built partnerships with local radio stations. They were broadcasting this thing. Enseña for Chile now said, "Let's deploy not just two people, but 50 people."
Fernando Reimers:
It's a beautiful story. It's a beautiful story of how good ideas can come from anywhere, that leadership can come from the places you least expect it. These people are recent college graduates. A lot of people would say, "What do they know?" Well, in this case, they show that they knew more than the ministry. They knew how to find a solution to try to do something with a situation.
Fernando Reimers:
It's also an example of the power of civil society working with government. Those mayors in those cities had the humility to say, "Well, we don't have a solution, but these young people do. Let's broadcast that." These are two examples of innovation from civil society. I'll give you two examples of innovation from the government.
Fernando Reimers:
When the government of Columbia said, "We're shutting down the schools." The secretary of Bogota, remarkable woman, she's a university professor, maybe an accidental Secretary of Education. She convened a virtual meeting, like a town hall. She invited all the principals. I don't know whether teachers. She set the following tone, her name is Edna [inaudible 00:16:18].
Fernando Reimers:
She said, "We have a real problem. We're not going to be able to meet in person, but I think we have an obligation to make sure that people keep learning. I don't know how we're going to do it. I'm certain that together we're going to figure something out." They began to generate innovation.
Fernando Reimers:
The first thing they did is the ministry had a website which had been developed in partnership with the university called [inaudible 00:16:44]. It's a university that works with fairly low income individuals. It was a website who teach technology. They basically went to this thing that exists and said, "Well, let's repurpose it. Let's get the curriculum. Let's develop digital resources, put them there."
Fernando Reimers:
Of course, what did they find out within a week, what we were just discussing at the outset of this conversation, most kids didn't have access to that. Then they said, "Let's use radio, let's use TV. Let's learn in packets." It's a great example here, again, of how humble leadership, invitational leadership, democratic leadership that basically says, "I don't know how to do that, but I need you." Came up with an innovation.
Fernando Reimers:
Something similar happened in Sao Paolo. The secretary of education did something along similar lines, perhaps because he had been previously secretary of Amazonas, which is a place that not a lot of people care much about in Brazil. He had developed that humility of, a different way to put it is he didn't have the arrogance of some other public figures, including in this country, who pretended that they knew how to solve the problem.
Fernando Reimers:
In fact, by taking that stance made the problem worse because they turned off the very people who could have helped. I think out of a year, we have documented 100 cases like that of innovations, but it doesn't solve the bigger problem. I'm so glad that they have been. I hope we can learn from the innovation dividends of the pandemic.
Fernando Reimers:
I hope we can learn some of those lessons, but I cannot imagine what it would have been if there hadn't been those efforts. In spite of those efforts, it's still a pretty dramatic situation.
June:
When you look at those innovations, when you're talking about examples, WhatsApp, I think of a lot of Latin America is being very rural and marginalized where you have to travel for three hours to get to a school. Do you foresee that some of these innovations might be put into practice in [foreign language 00:19:05] normal times to help rural communities in particular?
Fernando Reimers:
Yes, I do think so. I do think that just to focus on the positive that there are some dividends of this pandemic, both in terms of the things that we learn and in terms of the ideas that are going to stay with us in normal times. The ideas aren't just about the use of technology, which I do think we have realized how important technology is to help us function.
Fernando Reimers:
We have become aware of the tremendous divide in access to connectivity devices and skills. I think that's going to be a priority addressing that divide is going to be a priority like it hadn't been before. That's a good thing. In addition to that, I also think we have learned for example, that no one learns very much when they are in fear, when you are stressed out.
Fernando Reimers:
When you know that you or someone close to you could lose their life to these plague. In some ways, it's not rocket science, "Why did we need to pandemic to learn that?" The reality is, if you look at education systems in Latin America, they were not really emphasizing what we would call a whole child education or attention to the social, emotional development very much most of them.
Fernando Reimers:
I think that has changed. We have understood that to educate a person, you have to educate the whole person. That you have to do, what that group was doing with the street children, connect and tell them, "I see you. I care about you. How is it going?" Before they can be ready to learn math or science or literacy. I think that idea is going to stay with us. That's an example.
Fernando Reimers:
I think that in terms of process, I hope, that we have realized that the places where it was possible to do some patchwork and sustain education to some extent, we're able to do that because of collaborations, because of collaborations among teachers within the school, because of collaborations among teachers across schools, because of collaboration between civil society and schools.
Fernando Reimers:
We have just realized the power of non-state actors to sustain education. I'm hoping that that powerful idea will stay with us after the pandemic that we will say, "How come we didn't see this before?" I think that there are some dividends. It's a painful way to learn them, but there is some goodness that will come out of this nightmare.
June:
Fernando, you talk about non-state actors. I'm wondering what do you see the role of industry and business in trying to get education going?
Fernando Reimers:
They have been very helpful. For example, in the case of Sao Paolo, what the secretary of education did when the government said, "We're going to shut down the schools." Is he actually invited 10 very influential business leaders in Sao Paolo. He did the same thing what Edna [inaudible 00:22:10] did in Bogota, basically asking for help, inviting collaboration, but with heads of industry.
Fernando Reimers:
Great things, I wrote a case study about that. Great things came out of that. People basically put money and resources on the table to help them build an amazing multimedia platform and deliver essentially cash to the kids, the food program that they used to deliver through the schools, they now deliver cash to the families.
Fernando Reimers:
I think that business leaders throughout this emergency have collaborated with the public sector. They have realized how important it is. I see that continuing. There is already some of that in Latin America beginning, well, I don't know, 15, 20 years ago in this region, there have been efforts to organize coalitions of the business community in Guatemala. They are called [foreign language 00:23:07]. In Columbia, they are called in [foreign language 00:23:11].
Fernando Reimers:
In Brazil, there is something called [foreign language 00:23:14]. There is a chapter of this sort in just about every country in Latin America. What they try to do is they try to mobilize the private sector to do various things. One is to advocate for education. Other one is to support in various ways, education. That was happening. I am hoping that this pandemic is going to cause that to happen even more.
Fernando Reimers:
I don't know whether it will, because there is a financial impact of the pandemic on everybody. I'm hoping that it will be possible for Latin America to really interpret these crisis in the way in which the secretary of the UN has framed it, which is, "This is a lot more than a health crisis than economic human rights, security crisis that is going to require a whole of society approach tremendous solidarity to come out of that."
Fernando Reimers:
Of course in that picture, there is a role for everybody, for civil society and so on. I hope it will happen. One of the things I have done in trying to make sense out of these difficult time is look at the history of past pandemics. Of course, that history is both horrifying sometimes and inspiring other times. It's horrifying because if you look 100 years ago, the Spanish flu misnomer, because these did not originally in Spain, but the plague of 1918 help bring Hitler to power.
Fernando Reimers:
This is well-documented in a very good study of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, that examine how the financial impact of the pandemic in Germany, in municipal spending reduce services, marginalized a lot of people. Those people became prey of these extremists, intolerant groups, such as the ones that are rising in the United States these days.
Fernando Reimers:
Essentially white supremacists, who began to organize them and tell them, "Well, you're hurting. You know why you're hurting? Because the world hates Germany you know where you're hurting? Because all these bankers are really screwing you up and so on." In 1918, a fellow named Adolf Hitler was a clown who was laughed by the politicians. They thought, "Who is he?"
Fernando Reimers:
Well, in 15 years he was elected chancellor of Germany. That's a lesson that we should internalize. I think if there is a region that is at risk, there's a country is the United States of America. We should actually look at the example of Germany because we see plenty of things in this country that should really concern us, like the creation of an Anglo-Saxon caucus in the U.S. Congress, for example.
Fernando Reimers:
They repeated calls from our intelligence agencies that say the most serious security crisis risks to the United States is in the form of white supremacist terrorists organizing. The U.S. is not the only country. These groups talk to each other. I am sure that there are similar risks to democracy in the nations of Latin America. In looking at history, there are also inspiring examples.
Fernando Reimers:
You look at the plague in Italy, 1345, I think it was. It was called the Black Death. The Black Death was terrible. Arrives in Italy within two years, wipes out a third of the population of Italy. What a tragedy. A couple of decades after that, what is it, Cosimo de' Medici is born. He becomes a very wealthy merchant in the city of Florence, who does something completely counterintuitive in Italy, that is economically and otherwise, devastated by this plague.
Fernando Reimers:
It was the plague on top of the Middle Ages. This guy becomes a patron for the arts. His family, his son, and his grandson, Lorenzo de' Medici, they become patrons for artists. That's why you see people like Leonardo da Vinci, Michelangelo, and Machiavelli all descend into this tiny city. What does that strange move produce? The Renaissance.
Fernando Reimers:
In a way, the plague in Italy also gave rise to these flourishing of the arts and of the sciences and to these ideas of humanism that eventually brought us the Renaissance. Between the breakdown of democracy in Germany and the Renaissance, I certainly much prefer the Renaissance.
Fernando Reimers:
I'm hoping that in Latin America, there will be leaders who will do what Cosimo de' Medici and Lorenzo de' Medici did in understanding that no one is going to do this work for us. That this could be terrible, probably a lot worse than we can imagine. If the rise of fascism is not enough to help us understand how serious it is, this could be really serious.
Fernando Reimers:
The choice between one scenario of another comes down to what each one of us chooses to do in this moment. I'm hoping that the leadership of Latin America will understand this.
June:
When you're looking at the leadership in Latin America, what countries would you give good report cards to in terms of education during the pandemic?
Fernando Reimers:
It's a hard question to answer, because I know that everybody tried so hard. You don't necessarily give a report card because of how successful the strategies are. Countries are at different places and they have different levels of resources. I think, you value the effort and what people did, knowing that there were different, very difficult circumstances.
Fernando Reimers:
Ecuador, under the leadership of [inaudible 00:29:19] Kramer, I think showed great capacity to bring in a very difficult context, very contested context, great capacity to prioritize education. To think about equity gaps, to think about connectivity. I think they got laptops for a lot of very low income people. They thought about internet connections in rural areas.
Fernando Reimers:
Certainly, a lot of very commendable efforts in that country. As I mentioned, Bogota, it's not just the country. You have to look underneath the country. I think Bogota in my view, amazing what they did. Sao Paolo in Brazil, I wouldn't say that the country of Brazil is exemplary because sadly, I think the leadership of Brazil, like the leadership of the U.S., under Donald Trump was largely missing in action during this pandemic.
Fernando Reimers:
Lousy leadership made this pandemic a lot worse. For a while, they didn't even have a minister of education. They were in denial in Brazil about a pandemic, and they didn't even have the ministry of education. In that context, the states emerge and they said, "There is no one, but us." There were good things happening in the state and the municipal level.
Fernando Reimers:
I think the city of Sao Paolo is a very good example. Something similar happened in Mexico. It's a tragedy because Mexico has the longest history of educational television in Latin America and a pretty remarkable educational television. They did something very sensible, which was to realize, "We can't use internet, let's use TV." They use all the programming that they had, but that trade was on in the best way.
Fernando Reimers:
I've been looking at studies conducted by my own students and others, looking at implementation of that. There were real challenges in terms of the effectiveness of what was done in Mexico. I think that when we look at measures, it's not going to be good. In that context, the secretaries of education at the state level actually rose to say and civil society, "There is no one but us."
Fernando Reimers:
I'm not giving you an answer that says here's a country that has done very well. A, because I don't think it would be fair. Everybody has tried. I do think what we have seen is that there has been distributed leadership at the national, at the state, at the municipal level. At all those levels, you can find people who did good things, people that we can learn from.
Fernando Reimers:
That the leadership hasn't just come from government, but there has also been civil, universities is a great example. I just finished a book which will be published at the end of this summer, looking at how 20 universities around the world, including about eight in Latin America, essentially took responsibility to partner with public education systems, to be of service to them during the pandemic.
Fernando Reimers:
In that context, that question I can answer with facts. The University of Guadalajara is amazing what they did. One of the largest public universities in Mexico, which actually has a number of high schools that are part of their system. These two worlds were very much worlds apart. The high schools and the university. In this pandemic, they came together.
Fernando Reimers:
The university began to integrate a range of activities that they had of outreach and had a real strategy. I think that they were transformed by this pandemic in a good way. In ways that frankly, our own university Harvard could probably learn from. In ways that universities like MIT could learn from.
Fernando Reimers:
In a sense that, here you see a university that says, "We have a public responsibility. Our responsibility isn't just to figure out how are we going to teach our students? How are we going to make sure that our faculty are okay? Our staff are okay? We have an obligation to society. Our responsibility is to figure out how do we help the people who are not in university."
Fernando Reimers:
One of the things that University of Guadalajara has done just to give you an idea, is to host a series of public conversations like this podcast, to provide guidance to the public. It's like the big outreach mission of the university. Same is true for the Tech of Monterrey. They did some very good things, also in Mexico, [foreign language 00:33:47] in Columbia.
Fernando Reimers:
I think that this crisis has been a very good moment to make visible leadership coming from many different places, whether it is a foundation of the Jesuits working with street children, whether it is two teachers of a program like Teach For Chile, whether it is a secretary of education of Bogota or Sao Paolo, or of a country.
Fernando Reimers:
Whether it is an association of business leaders or whether it is a university. I think that everybody wins from understanding that what makes a society work is everybody coming together and asking, "What can I do for the common good, for the public good?"
June:
One last question. We tend to think in the United States because so many people are being vaccinated, "The pandemic is almost over." In Latin America, there are many people who haven't even seen a vaccine, and I'm not talking about poor people. I'm talking even about those who would normally have access to the privileges of society.
June:
There's a lot of talk about, "Should we open the schools? Should we keep the schools closed? What should we do?" What does your research show? How do you balance education and health-related priorities?
Fernando Reimers:
I have been looking at the evidence on what does school opening do in terms of transmission. I used to think, eight months ago, because based on the evidence from previous pandemics, that schools were not a dangerous place, and that we should reopen right away and as soon as possible in order to mitigate learning loss.
Fernando Reimers:
I knew that all the other arrangements that were in place were not very effective. All this distance learning and so on. As I look at current evidence from openings of schools in Italy, in France, in the UK, it's really mixed, and I couldn't say honestly, that schools aren't going to be a health hazard. I think it depends.
Fernando Reimers:
It depends on the living conditions on how densely populated the place is, on how much contagion there is at a given point in time. What that means is that it probably makes no sense to have a blanket statement or policy even for a country and to say, "Brazil should open all the schools."
Fernando Reimers:
The reality in Rocinha is very different from the reality in Santa Catarina, in terms of density. In terms of health conditions, in terms of how many people are infected, and you probably shouldn't open the schools in Rocinha. Rocinha is one of the low income favelas in Brazil. Whereas in some places in Santa Catarina, maybe you can open the school.
Fernando Reimers:
If the weather is nice, you can basically have classes outside, you can put some big tents, just make sure you have good airflow. It should be okay. I think if I were to say, "What's a general statement with respect to school closures?" You need to have localized responses, that are made by the people closest to the problem and to the community.
Fernando Reimers:
In close coordination between education and public health authorities that you, you should not try to have even a state policy because conditions within a state may vary quite a bit. I'm afraid you're right, June. Latin America is certainly not in the beginning. I mean, it's not in the end of this crisis, may not even be in the middle of this crisis for some of the countries.
Fernando Reimers:
The question really should be, how do we continue educating children while these goes on? How do we make sure that whatever arrangements we have to put in place, and it may not be in person instruction for some children, that they are as effective as they possibly can be. Having said that, of course, I think every effort should be made to open the schools.
Fernando Reimers:
One implication of that is classify the teachers as essential workers and get them vaccinated. Something that some states in this country didn't do until the very end, in this country, I mean, the United States. Classify your teachers as essential workers, make sure they get a vaccine, so they're not fearing for their lives.
Fernando Reimers:
If they come to school, they are a greater risk on the kids. We know that because they're older and they have different health conditions than the children. Then, let the teachers and the principals make the decisions that are most appropriate, given the local circumstances, in coordination with the public health authorities. Then of course, hold people accountable.
Fernando Reimers:
Tell them, "This is not one big vacation every day that goes." I mean, as we see the evidence, as we realize that one year without schooling could mean that a child is back two grade levels or three grade levels, and that we may lose 20% of the kids who never come back. This is huge. The educational impact is huge for kids and for countries.
Fernando Reimers:
It's a very tough situation. There is no other way to put it. This is a calamity, no matter how many innovation dividends I try to look for in this crisis.
June:
Thank you very much. On that sad note, we have been listening to Fernando Reimers Ford Foundation professor of the Practice International Education. He's also Director of the Global Education Initiative and the International Education Policy Program at Harvard University. Thank you for being with us, Fernando.
Fernando Reimers:
It was a pleasure, June. Thank you.