Dear Editor
Coronavirus. It’s something that affected all of us in many different ways throughout the year. It was believed that it started out in China and from there it travelled all across the world.
Some people take it seriously while others don’t. It affected people’s lives through loved ones passing away to places shutting down to people falling extremely ill themselves. The government of the province was quoted saying that they “recommended all high schools with at least 600 students move to Level 3 of the safe school plan which reduces the amount of in-class learning.” Now they want to reduce the amount of in class learning in schools because there is a high case of COVID-19 throughout the schools in Saskatchewan but they don’t want to shut down buildings that, unlike schools, don’t need to be open?
Now that doesn’t make any sense whatsoever to me. First of all, if they’re so worried about schools being opened because of high COVID-19 cases in the schools, why not take charge and close down other buildings that don’t need to be open? Like, for example, bars, gyms, restaurants and so on. Now I can see people being upset about bars and gyms being shut down, but put it this way, with bars you don’t need bars to be opened, it’s just for people to go ahead and drink whenever they want when they can go to the liquor store and buy themselves a bottle and go back home and drink the same way. Gyms, you can easily search up videos on the internet on how to get a real exercise and workout or you can follow choreography videos if you’re into exercise involving dancing. So as you can see we don’t need bars and gyms to be opened when there are other options that are also opened. We don’t need restaurants to be opened when you can cook at home and you can order for delivery or take out. We don’t need to be in a restaurant having the food when we have other options that are much more safer and much more respectful towards other people who are trying to go throughout their life trying to protect themselves without being worried about being in contact with someone having COVID-19 because they caught it at a restaurant that they didn’t even need to be at.
Second of all, schools need to be open. It’s a simple as that. Without schools being open, we go throughout the year doing online school then that’s going to affect not only teachers but also students. Have you ever thought about the impact from being away from school is going to have on everyone? No, it is much more difficult than just being away from school and being away from friends. Because in people’s minds they think if there is no communication face-to-face with people at school then it’s not a big deal because we still have a connection online, right? Wrong. The communication between people through online and people face-to-face is completely different, more different than we could possibly imagine. Face-to-face students will actually put in an effort to get up, show up at school and actually work hard to reach where they want to be at in their education because the teachers motivate them to do that. Through online school it’s not the same no matter how much teachers motivate their students to work. We can’t actually expect a student to get up in the morning, be at their computer at 9 a.m., work until 3:30 p.m. and do well. Teachers now they are exactly the same. Teachers don’t enjoy school as much if the kids don’t enjoy it either or feel like they can’t accomplish something. A bond between a student and a teacher is as strong as a bond between the world and its people. Without a student having that connection with their teacher then there won’t be something that’s important to have in every school no matter the amount of kids, religion or size of the school and that’s motivation.
Lastly even if we don’t eliminate all in class learning and just reduce it, it’s still going to have the same impact on teachers and students because we’re slowly making our way towards that point where reducing will turn into eliminating in a snap.
So in conclusion we should look at our options before jumping to conclusions. Thank you.
Gerald Gratton
North Battleford
