Introduction

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According to Johns Hopkins University, of the 197 nations in the world 185 (94%) are affected by the Coronavirus (COVID-19) [1]. Even in remote places like the Amazon rainforests reports indicate increasing numbers of COVID-19 infected natives and deaths. [2] Most worrisome is that industrialized nations such as the United States, Great Britain, and Germany, have the highest numbers of COVID-19 confirmed infected and deaths. The distressing latest statistics place the U.S. with the world’s highest number of confirmed infected people and deaths. [3] When analyzing the availability of essential services and information that is offered to the urban and rural populations of the U.S., parents in rural areas, one finds gaps and disparities.

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COVID-19 Infowars and Social Inequality

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Among urban and rural populations there are differences in the dissemination of COVID-19 related services and information. While urban populations may have access to pandemic related information and services, other conationals face limited access to the necessary resources to deal with the crisis, they remain sidelined and more prone to the pandemic’s effects. Among the marginalized are the countless homeless, undocumented immigrants, the elderly, and destitute families with school-age children in urban and rural areas.

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In their relegated conditions, whether urban or rural, parents with school-age children the lack the information, resources, and services available to deal with the pandemic. Consequently, they may be more predisposed to mental health problems, stress, learned helplessness, isolationism, sadness, and depression. [4] To relieve these dire effects of the pandemic, mental health providers have recommended that everyone, parents included, should have available information that is well-documented, honest, current, reliable, and that misinformation and confusing politicized polarized information should be set aside. [5]

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Assisting the Marginalized and Parents in Rural Public Schools

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Of the world’s 197 nations in the world, 192 (97%) nations have closed their schools due to COVID-19 according to UNESCO. [6] Consequently, the lack of formal schooling impairs the education of 99.9% of the world’s school-age children, parents, teachers, and their future. In the U.S., following the advice of health experts, most states have closed their schools for the remainder of the 2019 – 2020 school year. As a remedy states have instituted home-based distance learning delivery system that teachers and parents may not be fully prepared to work with because they lack the technology or must learn it almost overnight. Many parents, who suddenly need to be teachers, must also deal with not being able to purchase technology to meet this new challenge. 

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Among the most affected are students in rural areas and their future success and contributions to society seem much more compromised. The threat is that they remain illiterate, underserved, and poor. That is, by remaining at home with unemployed parents who struggle to make ends meet and who are not prepared to face the realities of distance learning, these students will inevitably remain uneducated and have low paid jobs, and eventually society will suffer the consequences due to the reduced tax revenue generated by their low-income jobs; some may face the judicial system because they engage in illegal activities, drugs, gangs, as happens with minorities in major cities. For instance, in rural areas or regions characterized by disenfranchised minority families, such as southern states of the U.S., without the appropriate accommodations as a result of school closures and the outlook remains grim. Therefore, to improve these conditions parents need to be better conversant and equipped to participate in the technologically driven home-based distance education of their school-age children. 

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In today’s high-tech culture, much should be done to fill the services and information gaps to meet the needs of rural families. To survive, parents need the home-based resources to continue the education of their children: access to educational technology, the needed training and technical support, as well as the knowledge base for education’s learning management systems (LMS). By not satisfying these conditions, the system bankrupts the academic lives of uncountable rural school-age students. Moreover, parents also need emotional support mechanisms to cope with the stress of this new reality and the related uncertain future. Therefore, it is imperative to assist parents if they are likely to survive and cope with these sudden demands; their emotional welfare and their children’s future remain at stake. Thus, to remain fair, the pandemic test presented to key decision makers is to discover ways to provide information and services for these constituencies amid a numbing, immobilizing pandemic crisis, keeping in mind that there is no easy solution.

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Proposed Recommendations

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In this section, I outline suggested responses to the crisis, some of which may be considered priorities to assist parents of school-age children who may need assistance while educating at home. My list is a research agenda for scholars in education and health care providers. First, we can explore parents’ perceptions and understanding of the implications and effects of COVID-19 on their lives and the lives of their school-age children which can help develop intervention programs. From an organizational standpoint, it may also be necessary to explore teachers’ and school administrators’ perceptions and understanding of the implications and effects of COVID-19 on parents and their school-age children and compare them to the parents’ perceptions. One can ask, “How well-informed and prepared do parents and school personnel think they are to deal with the COVID-19 pandemic?” Or, “What are participants’ perceptions and thoughts about how schools have helped them to respond to the modified educational delivery system due the COVID-19 pandemic? Finally, “How can school personnel foster a digitally driven school-home partnership so that parents serve the educational needs of their children?” A comparison of both parental and school personnel’s perceptions may help improve communication, understanding, and the establishment and delivery of better services for the education of their children.

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References

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1.  Johns Hopkins University (2020): https://coronavirus.jhu.edu/map.html

2.  Preissler Iglesias and Sims (2020): https://www.bloombergquint.com/politics/as-covid-19-reaches-the-amazon-indigenous-people-are-at-risk

3.  Worldometers (2020): https://www.worldometers.info/coronavirus/country/us/

4.  American Psychological Association (2020): https://www.apa.org/topics/covid-19/local-mental-health

5.  Stacy Weiner (2020): https://www.aamc.org/news-insights/new-coronavirus-affects-us-all-some-groups-may-suffer-more

6.  UNESCO (2020): https://en.unesco.org/covid19/educationresponse
 

Social Science Perspectives