THE return of face-to-face classes, albeit limited only to three schools by now in Leyte is a welcome development. The outcome of this experiment should signal the soon return of the regular classroom instructions. This move of the Department of Education should have been made earlier had the government and its inter-agency task force been more efficient, effective, and swift on its Covid-19 response.
Notwithstanding the rather sluggish intervention of the Health Department, only time can tell of the costly consequence and impact this pandemic had done on the pupils and students affected. In Leyte alone, there are more than a million students both in the elementary and secondary levels this school year enrolled in a hybrid form of learning. The education department must have a way of measuring success in the learning method. Otherwise, and potentially, the almost two years of the limited learning process, which was restricted to only modules and or online classes, could be a total waste of time.
This never-before-seen and experienced method of learning imposed on a massive scale in the school's history system in the Philippines must leave an imprint, and hopefully, that should be constructive. Otherwise, an ill consequence would mean a Covid-affected-generation. After all, the likelihood of vacuum that the Covid period may have potentially created upon the minds of millions of students is never a remote possibility. The contrary could be an awful possibility.
With the ramping-up of vaccination rollout in the region, and hopefully with the public excitedly and aggressively cooperating, herd immunity will be achieved sooner. Otherwise, we need not expect a speedy resumption of normal classroom instructions. God forbid that the seeming lackadaisical public gravely fearful of vaccine be overtaken again by another virus more vicious than Covid.