Pandemic Marks Milestone in Children’s Literacy Context in Brazil
When you think about education, especially in the first years of life, literacy is one of the first points that come to mind. However, not all children are able to become literate on time or in the same way, which creates great concern for parents, teachers and schools. “There is no age that can be considered appropriate in a standard way, because it is always necessary to consider the context in which the child lives, the place that writing occupies in the activities carried out by their family, the positions that writing has in the culture of a certain group”, explains professor Émerson de Pietri from the Faculty of Education at USP.
He further adds: “It is also necessary to note that childhood is a time for playing and that more school-based literacy processes cannot take away this right from the child. Even if it is not interesting to develop this at this time [Early Childhood Education], it is important to play games with letters or learn to write your own name, for example. These are activities that help in the process of acquiring writing, which will be carried out more consistently in Elementary School I”.
Pandemic
According to the Alfabetiza Brasil survey , carried out by the Ministry of Education, only four in ten children in the 2nd year of Elementary School were literate in 2021. This data is even more worrying when compared to 2019, in which six in ten were literate. An important factor between the two data was the covid-19 pandemic. “These worrying data show the fundamental role of public schools in the process of teaching and learning writing”, says de Pietri. The teacher points out that, for children belonging to social groups who on a daily basis had access to different reading materials such as books, magazines, comics, internet access, the pandemic brought challenges, but much smaller than for those who did not have these resources at home.
These problems point to school as a place where it is possible to have access to reading and writing practices in a more consistent way. “Children who, during the pandemic, had support at home from family members, adults, in short, from those who could help in this process, faced fewer challenges than children who were unable to have this support for various reasons”, he adds.
Consequences
“Children who were unable to learn literacy during the pandemic period find themselves in a very difficult situation at school today, because they do not have the necessary foundations in reading and writing to continue their schooling journey satisfactorily”, he warns. by Pietri. For him, the biggest challenge today is “how to ensure that these children become literate at a later time than when school focuses more on this process”. In fact, classrooms are places with great heterogeneity, that is, there is a difference between the level of learning of students in the same room. However, post-pandemic, this has become even more apparent.
“This makes the work of teachers even more difficult, because individual work with students is necessary. If these children cannot have the support they need at home, the situation becomes extremely challenging”, says the teacher. He concludes by highlighting the need for education networks to guarantee satisfactory working conditions for these professionals, given the importance of the school environment for many children.