The Crazy School Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic: Part 1
The coronavirus pandemic is long over overseas.
It’s not over in Japan yet. It may never end.
However, even looking back now, I think society during the COVID-19 pandemic was truly awful and insane.
The school’s response, in particular, was unbelievable.
First of all, “Silent Eating”
I think eating can be fun while talking with close friends.
Especially for young people like high school students.
As teachers, we had the job of going into classrooms during lunch to monitor students to make sure they weren’t talking while eating.
It was an unbelievable job, and I never scolded a student for talking.
A teacher who was also monitoring the classroom would yell at students who were talking a little.
This teacher’s scolding made the classroom feel like a funeral.
Daily, TV and newspapers were reporting crazy programs about things like how to eat silently while wearing a mask.
I never watch TV or the newspapers, but when I saw this report online, I felt like Japanese society was coming to an end.
The job of monitoring silent eating was a daily occurrence, and it was very scary to think that this had become a normal part of everyday life.
Around the same time, work began on conducting a survey to see if students would receive the COVID-19 vaccine.
I couldn’t understand at all why we teachers had to do work that was so similar to that of a public health center.
Our job also involved tallying up the wishes of all students in the school and persuading those who didn’t want to be vaccinated.
Teachers even had the job of escorting students who wanted to be vaccinated to mass vaccination sites some distance away after school.
At the same time, we teachers were also asked by management if we wanted to be vaccinated.
To be continued.
