Will children ever recover from loss of a school year?

In the normal course of events children would be tumbling out of schools two weeks from now, squealing with delight at the prospect of no more lessons for nearly a couple of months. Teachers wouldn’t be far behind them, delighted at the thought of a break from their pupils and dreaming of their own holidays, probably to sunnier climes than here.

This year could be very different, of course, unless the quarantine rule is abandoned.

As a child, I adored the end of the school year. Continental holidays hadn’t been invented then, but a few days at The Port (Portrush) or to Butlins in the South was a real luxury for those who could afford them. As far as we knew it was just townie types who went on holidays. Country folk like us were happy enough to get a day to The Port as part of the church outing.

For me, not having to go to school was all I wanted. On our doorstep were acres of land we called The Plantain and the Back Moss areas where we learned to climb trees, camp out and stuff ourselves with blueberries, returning home only when the light began to fade. Nature was an education in itself. It pervaded the conscience without us realising it, creating memories never to be forgotten.

How different it has been this year with most children out of school since around March and not even the promise they can return when the holiday period is over. Most of them will have had some form of home schooling but the older ones may not even know which secondary school they will be going to. And what lessons will children learn from all the chaos? That adults aren’t very smart to have caused the mess?

A few years down the line, the pandemic hopefully over, those children will be older, able to recall the year 2020 when school was out for months because of something called ‘a lockdown’, which kept people in their homes, and social distancing, which many paid no attention to. They will recall the shops with the funny arrows on the floor, people covering their mouths and wearing rubber gloves as they did their shopping. They may even remember having to queue for ages first before they could go into the shops. And they may have some recall of parents cleaning down all the shopping once they got it home before putting it in the cupboards.

They may recall people smartly stepping out of the way on meeting another person in the street while others didn’t bother and, sure weren’t there family get-togethers everywhere in homes and funerals attended by masses of people who didn’t care about the police? And they will remember boredom setting in because there was only the garden to play in, and the fractious moments between mums and dads who couldn’t get to work. Anyone in the family with toothache suffered because dentists could only deal with emergencies and on buses everyone had to cover their mouth.

Children may remember the hours they spent on their laptops or mobile phones in their bedrooms without parental disapproval since grown-ups were at loss too as to how they would keep up the teaching themselves. It was a way to pass the time, especially since their friends weren’t allowed to visit, nor were much missed grandparents.

It’s difficult to assess the effect these current months of restrictions will have on this generation of children and young adults, a generation we oldies think to be the most pampered in history.

Materially, they have much more than we ever had and go to schools far more sophisticated and equipped than anything we ever knew. The trade union of the teachers is powerful and were it not for them, some parents would say, the schools would have been re-opened long ago. Only science can prove or disprove that argument and we’re not at that stage yet. We all need people and friends and probably children benefit more from those relationships than we imagine.

Depriving them of that is something we all must take responsibility for.