When learning disappears. The pandemic and the crisis of the educational model


Abstract

One year after the start of the pandemic, each child and adolescent globally has lost seventy-four days of education: more than a third of the school year. One hundred and twelve billion days of education lost, especially among the world’s poorest children (UNESCO and Center for Global Development, 2021). In Latin America, the Caribbean and South Asia, children outnumbered three to one their Western European peers in terms of time loss in participating to formal educational processes. Relying on literature and research data on Learning Loss (Save the Children Italy Report, 2021), the article proposes an interpretation of the systemic fragility of the most widespread educational model and services, detected in this dramatic juncture. An attempt will be made to investigate and prefigure the main elements of a strategy that aims at transforming this crisis into an opportunity to change approach, languages, models, spaces, emotional relationships in the educational processes, centred around the indications on public policies set out by European institutions (European Parliament Resolutions, 2020).