Mission East’s reading groups and civic centers for Corona-affected families are acknowledged by a Danish professor of pedagogy.

The corona pandemic has shut down entire communities so that children cannot attend school. Vulnerable children therefore lose a safe area where they are allowed to play as children and can acquire school knowledge in quiet concentration. When isolated in the home, they are put to hard housework and risk being abused. The girls are at risk of being married at a much too early age.

A welcome help

Therefore, Mission East’s efforts are a welcome help. This applies to both reading groups for girls and women in Nepal and Afghanistan and the partners’ civic centers for children and families in Iraq and Syria.

“For many, it can be a great and welcome help in a stressful situation,” says Hans Henrik Knoop, as we talk about Mission East’s reading groups and centers. Knoop is an associate professor at the Danish Institute for Pedagogy and Education at Aarhus University and extraordinary professor at North-West University.

“It is worthy of all honor and respect that initiatives like these are taken,” he adds.

Boredom harms health

The corona pandemic has closed down schools around the world, and it has serious consequences for children’s learning, he believes.

“Kids learn all the time,” he says. “When they are bored, they learn that life is boring if you do nothing active to escape the boredom. Prolonged boredom is depressing and harmful to health!”

He elaborates:

“The younger you are, the more teachable the brain is. Young children are thus, for better or worse, more receptive and dependent on their surroundings. So when schools close down like during the pandemic, smaller children are more vulnerable than older people for that reason alone.”

Pays a high price

In addition, the closure hits hardest on children with poor resources, the professor explains:

“If you have the resources and are able to utilize it, it can be quite liberating, when the teacher is away and you have to manage your time yourself. However, if one does not manage to utilize time wisely, and perhaps even lives in dysfunctional families without being able to do anything, children may end up paying a high price for it.”

“In addition, it often requires great motivation and discipline to become acquainted with new knowledge. Without skilled teachers as mentors and inspirers, many students will not succeed in learning what they are supposed to.”

Children wear themselves out

And motivation is precisely Knoop’s area of ​​expertise:

“It is basically not mentally sustainable to learn and work without experiencing it meaningful. You simply burn out. It is infertile in every way. Boredom makes you learn more slowly, you forget faster and have less desire to keep going.”

“If you put children in unpleasant situations without them being able to do anything, and without giving them convincing justification that it is the right thing to do, then they wear themselves out,” says Hans Henrik Knoop.

Precisely for this reason, he believes, reading groups and civic centers play an important role during a Corona pandemic, which puts pressure on vulnerable children and families.