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Covid 19 and education: There is no vaccine for long-term trauma
I am a retired college professor, privileged to watch from the sidelines the various educational responses to the Covid 19 pandemic. My perspective is significantly informed by having lived with traumatic brain injury and post-traumatic stress disorder for the past decade. It is from this perch that I sense the long shadow of trauma encroaching. It is hard for me to believe that schooling during COVID-19, won’t exact a toll. With time, we will learn what the impact has been of Zoom, virtual learning, 6-foot boundaries between people and, for some, limited formal learning because of lack of access to equipment or, perhaps, no internet signal. I think we will discover that for many students of all ages, schooling in the era of COVID-19, has been traumatizing.
I realize that trauma is an over-used and under defined term. I am using it here to describe an experience or experiences of such magnitude that the impact bores into the body’s neuro-biological systems, causing significant dysregulation. In a science fiction movie, we may be able to see brain cells convening in battalions to protect the body from another invasion of threat and fear. We could see the brilliant choreography of the brain as protector and guardian.
In the next year or two, or g-d forbid, three years, the pandemic will have been quieted…
