Around the 99’-00’, we worked with an IT&C client who asked us for two major programs: Train the Trainer and Change Management, both for a large soon to be privatized state company. The project we were carrying out was funded by the World Bank and aimed at automating the company and training its employees to work with computers, to adapt to all transformations the company was going through.
I remember there were many people who had never used computers before. We were teaching them to teach others. It wasn’t easy, but it was ”full of satisfaction”: those people were really happy to learn, they could feel the satisfaction of acquiring a new skill.
I thought about this project in the morning when I heard, again and again, debates on what to do with the school year this fall. The eternal lamentation has become irritating, the boring televised debates in which everyone gives their opinion, criticising everyone else but no one does much in the end.
I am thinking of something: how would it be for the government to pick a larger association that aims to support the education in this country (one based on principles, values, so that there would be no doubts), to ask it to gather 100 training companies, to reach a format of ‘virtual facilitator training’, and then to make all teachers, all headmasters go through this? The support could continue throughout the first semester.
This while the government finds solutions so that every school can be equipped with computers and internet. With the summer coming to an end and everyone on vacation, I doubt that teachers were prepared for the most probable eventuality of online teaching. I am sure that the government can find funds to decently support such a project.
Then, there are a lot of empty office spaces. How would it be for the government to rent them in case social distancing needs to be implemented and there is not enough space in schools? Companies are unable to pay the rent; employees work from home. Maybe for a time those office spaces or hotels can be used, thereby helping multiple parties involved.
A more entrepreneurial thinking, based on more concrete action, then on reflection, and then again, the action-reflection cycle, a larger interest for creating a more educated country, would surely bring votes but it would also create the foundation for the education’s future. I know, the foundation will wobble at first, but we can adjust it along the way, what is important is to move on from talking about education to action in the educational field.
Extraordinary times require extraordinary solutions.