In six months, possibly the unluckiest batch of students in our generation will finish college. Finally, it’s going to be over for Batch ‘22, and oh what a relief!
This is the group of alums that will go down in Pinoy history as the hapless kids who got to taste-test an undercooked K-to-12 basic education curriculum in 2012 and endure two more years of high school that, simply put, globalization required.
It seems absurd that in an age when information is out there on the Internet, Youtube education is as good as it gets, and more college dropouts are making it in the world’s richest list, there’s still a need for more years in school than less.
I was more fortunate than my other friends who went to public high schools, where needed facilities and learning resources were either nonexistent or always delivered half a school year too late. But that didn’t mean I was in a lot better situation at the Catholic school where I spent and completed my own senior high years. Despite best efforts from the admin and teaching staff, I couldn’t quite comprehend how two years of that kind of instruction could actually prepare me better for employment or college thereafter.
And then, just barely through college sophomore year, Covid-19 came in and became a pandemic—reminding us, among other things profoundly consequential, what “viral” originally means. And just like that, and in a stroke of another bad luck, the graduating K-to-12 batch became the Covid-slash-virtual batch.
It’s now nearly two years of a virtual ride, but the truth is, this is pretty much what’s already been happening all along for some time now. In case we’ve not noticed, the world has gone virtual, and the pandemic just confirmed we’re already there.
The graduating class won’t know for now how much spending the second half of university life at home and mostly glued to a computer screen will impact the quality of their learning and overall experience. It’s like the two darn extra years of high school, when no senior knew for sure if they were really useful and needed as advertised.
It’s a good thing that face-to-face classes at the tertiary level are slowly being resumed. Student-teacher interactions in the online setup are extremely limited, accessibility is fluctuating, and mental health is declining. According to the latest available data from the United Nations Children’s Fund (UNICEF), at least 1 in 7 children globally had been directly affected by lockdowns. An international survey conducted by UNICEF and Gallup found about 1 in 5 individuals aged 15 to 24 saying they had often felt depressed or had little interest in doing things amid the Covid-19 pandemic. A UNICEF-cited analysis by the London School of Economics estimated lost contribution to economies due to mental disorders that lead to disability or death among the youth at nearly $390 billion annually.
It’s also a good thing the Commission on Higher Education (CHEd) is now pushing to start face-to-face classes in all degree programs in low-risk areas. According to the CHEd, more than 70 percent of higher education personnel have been injected with Covid-19 vaccines. The country also recently started pediatric vaccination, which government officials believe is the biggest necessary step for the resumption of face-to-face classes all over the country. This year, over 21,000 students from about 200 higher education institutions all over the country have participated in limited in-person classes, which to date have been mostly limited to medical and health-allied science courses.
So far so good, according to the CHEd, which recently reported that Covid-19 infection among participants of limited face-to-face classes had been “very minimal,” with infections recorded so far all being mild to asymptomatic cases.
Government and school officials should exert all their efforts to, at least, give Batch 2022 the exit it deserves. Students of the piteous batch have been the lab rats for all experiments and pilot implementations without ever experiencing curriculum consistency. With the first semester of Academic Year 2021-2022 looming to a close, guidelines and necessary adjustments should be completed by now to let Batch 2022 experience face-to-face classes one last time.
A few more months of pilot face-to-face classes may add more inconsistency to what has already been a wildly erratic academic journey. But at the very least, experiencing real-life school for one last time will give these poor lab rats some semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy, and a much-needed and deserved denouement.
Whatever, the end is nigh to a bizarre and mind-blowing adventure for the K-to-12-slash-Covid-slash-virtual batch. Sa wakas.
