By Leow Chen Zee
Most parents and students interviewed say a flat ‘No!’ to the Ministry of Education’s decision to reopen the schools come October 3.
According to Isobel Tan, the very idea of wanting to reopen the school in October really scares her.
“I can’t really imagine the consequences of schools reopening in this pandemic,” the other of two sons said. “We haven’t fully recovered yet. Imagine students getting the Covid-19 virus without haven’t been inoculated. Their health would be affected.”
Another mother of three, Enid Lai said that she will definitely not encourage her children to attend physical classes when the schools reopen. “The students' health will be at risk because they are not inoculated yet,” she said. “They might have health consequences after recovering from the sickness of the Covid-19 virus. Also, there may be more school clusters.”
Lai’s 16-year-old daughter, Venus, said she does not think that the schools are going to open in October. “Or, should I say, most likely it won’t!” she predicted. “This is because the pandemic is not over yet. If the schools reopen, it will be putting the students’ health at risk. Now, since there’s a Delta variant of the virus, the mortality rate is higher than the normal one for people who are not inoculated, This will put the students’ health highly at risk.”
Meanwhile, a teacher at a primary school in Petaling Jaya, who preferred to be known only as Mrs. Zhou said that schools should not reopen so soon.
As a teacher, physical contact between us and the students is unavoidable, not to mention the physical contact between the students themselves.
“I am afraid of the Delta variant because once you get in contact with someone who is Covid positive, the variant could spread to you within 14 seconds, maybe even less,” she said.
“I hope that the government will quickly arrange for the vaccination of teenagers below the age of 16 so that the schools could be reopened quickly and let these kids live a normal life.”
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