Furthermore, the pandemic… - Observations on teaching

Abstract

The transformative event of the pandemic does not yet appear to have been fully measured, in Brazil, and perhaps elsewhere. One of the most explicit signs of this analytical negligence is revealed at the level of Education. The pandemic effects persist, and in a worrying way – countless surveys and research have consistently shown this. Clearly, in the training field, the pandemic has not yet passed. However, the forms of coping that are currently underway, or have been considered up until now, are precarious and uncertainly effective. In particular, the recurrent disregard for teaching is surprising. In numerous documents, including international ones, the diagnosis outlined in relation to the pandemic demonstrates concern for the learning experience, for the students, but almost never for the teaching staff. This absence is disturbing. What classrooms and schools are these, with students but without teachers? Are we facing an initial movement towards the so-called ‘classroom of the future’, where only the students would remain, but not their teachers? This asymmetry in the treatment of both groups – students & teachers – also points to other worrying symptoms. The teaching category reveals itself to be a working class increasingly experiencing a health crisis – mental and physical, at its limits. In several countries, it is even the sick class par excellence. Was a new category of patient also one of the brutal legacies of the pandemic?