Originally written: 11/23/2022
By Natasha Antoniuk
As a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, many children’s rights have been compromised, leading to a generally more unfavorable home, learning, and familial situations. These damaging circumstances are a result of the stress Covid-19 has put on families, the lack of online learning available to many students across the globe, and how healthcare systems have become overwhelmed since the beginning of the pandemic. A large effect that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on children is through leaving many students stuck at home and with online learning, as well as leaving many without any learning at all, considering that many children do not have a reliable internet connection, if any access to the internet or a computer at all. [1] A large damage on children from the pandemic has been in the education sector. In many neighborhoods, especially predominantly black and brown neighborhoods, children have been put at an educational disadvantage through lack of support, accessibility, and mentorship. [2] In private schools, students' families typically make more and are wealthier, which means that, in many situations, those that go to private schools have easier access to technology and internet access. This facilitates the work of schools providing education to wealthier families, since they may have online classes as a reasonable alternative. In schools that offer hybrid learning (both in-person, as well as online), the stress on families and children is lessened, as they offer an easier and more accessible system for parents and students to navigate, offering those without internet access or people to watch over children during the day an alternative. [2] This greatly eases pressure off parents, especially those with young children, who might otherwise need to hire a nanny or babysitter to watch over the children, assuming there was not another adult or older and more responsible adolescent to help out. This greatly harms the financial security of many families who were already in a state of poverty and now must pay for a person to watch over their children, which would usually be a free of charge benefit of children going to school. Another free benefit that would usually come from students being at school is reduced-price or free meals that are typically offered for lunch (and, in many cases, for breakfast as well) for those with families that have a lower income and qualify for financial aid. If students do not have accessed to reduced-price meals, that may mean that some do not have access to any meals, especially considering that “In less than two years, 100 million more children have fallen into poverty, a 10 per cent increase since 2019” [3]. If we take into account all children who lay in poverty, not only those who have more recently fallen into such a situation, “Across the world, about 1 billion children are multidimensionally poor, meaning they lack necessities as basic as nutrition or clean water” [3]. This is not only an issue that affects one area of the world – it affects all countries across the globe. Although many of these children would not have had access to many meals before the pandemic began, it requires an extremely stubborn and incompetent person to deny that children have been affected by the lack of access to school reduced-price meals. In the United States, there were alternatives offered by many schools to receive free or reduced meals and schools were able to offer these meals to more students [4], but this particular source, as well as many others, did not particularly mention how many schools actually followed through and acted upon these new waivers that were given to schools to increase the ease of food distribution or how many students were able to take advantage of the opportunities offered. A clear effect from the Covid-19 pandemic on the education of children can be seen in the quality of the learning received by children. As a result of the online pandemic, the general consensus in many countries around the globe was that the learning experience and effectiveness of children had declined greatly, leading to how many students may be experiencing a learning delay of around 3 months [5]. Students seem not to be scoring as well on online assessments as well, which may stem from a variety of reasons, including test format and lack of computer fluency [6]. This is a clear issue – students are falling behind in their studies, test scores, and learning. Although we can’t well predict what effect this will have on these students, especially young ones who may have not had as much opportunity of mental development, down the road and when they enter the job market, we already know that teachers will need to adapt the content of their classes to take into account the lowered learning effectiveness of students who received online schooling during the Covid-19 pandemic. Clearly, the Covid-19 pandemic has had many effects on children, a large portion of that effect being on the education and related areas, such as reduced-price meals, of children, especially those in poverty. This has been an effect of the lowered effectiveness of online learning, a lack of access to internet connection of students in low-income situations, and disparities in how schools handled the Covid-19 pandemic and offered alternatives for studnets. To learn more, visit: https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/04/09/covid-19-and-childrens-rights Sources: [1] https://www.hrw.org/news/2020/03/25/closing-digital-divide-critical-covid-19-response [2]https://phr.org/our-work/resources/pandemic-burnout-the-toll-of-covid-19-on-health-care-workers-and-children/?CID=701f40000018pCMAAY&ms=FY20_SEM_GoogleGrant&gclid=Cj0KCQjw166aBhDEARIsAMEyZh4KNrjWXupabpsGCVg4oXMFecsiwyy65q6zNLSelQ4AMShItcYbHEYaAmf0EALw_wcB [3] https://www.unicef.org/reports/unicef-75-preventing-a-lost-decade [4] https://www.usda.gov/coronavirus/school-meals [5]https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2021/03/classroom-teaching-better-than-remote-learning-education/ [6] https://www.future-ed.org/work/paper-vs-online-testing-whats-the-impact-on-test-scores/
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