Mothers bear the brunt of school closures, and cause them to set back their careers, knowing that out-of-school children are more vulnerable to abuse, malnutrition, and decreased mental health.
The American Economist newspaper said that the risks of closing schools in many countries of the world are great, especially in poor countries where there is no internet service for the vast majority of students, and the cost of depriving children of studying is prohibitive, as they deprive them of science and the loss of habits Learning, and electronic applications used in distance education, such as the Zoom application, is a bad alternative.
The magazine pointed out that the acceleration of the outbreak of the Corona pandemic in early April led to the closure of schools in the face of 90% of students around the world, and that that number decreased by about a third, as many schools were reopened in Europe and East Asia, but the schools reopened In many other places it is still slow.
Some American cities are planning to switch to distance learning during the next school year 2020-2021, and the Kenyan government canceled studies during the whole school year. In the Philippines, its president, Rodrigo Duterte, has stated that children may not be allowed back into the classroom unless a vaccine against Corona virus, South Africa has reopened restaurants, but in return only a few schools have opened.
The Economist pointed out that despite the justified fear of the parents of students due to the emerging Corona virus, which is still difficult to understand, the crowding of schools, and the difficulty of students' commitment to wear masks and measures of social divergence, the benefits of reopening schools outweigh the harms of keeping them closed to the students.
According to studies, children under the age of 18 are less likely to develop the disease by one third to one half. According to the magazine, British statistics indicate that the probability of death of those under the age of ten is a thousand times lower than those between the ages of 70 and 79 years.
The closure also causes children from poor families who do not have internet access to leave their well-to-do peers, and it is difficult to return parents who have no one to look after their children to work.
The magazine saw that the closure of schools is bad in rich countries, but the harm it does to poor countries is much worse, and that at least 465 million children will not be able to pursue distance education because they do not have internet access.
She said that many families in Africa and South Asia are encouraging their children to drop out of school and enter work or marriage because of economic hardship. Save the Children, a charity, has warned that about 10 million children are at risk of school dropout, most of them girls.