Starting next week, Luxembourgish schools will gradually reopen their doors. This has caused some amount of nervousness with parents who would prefer to keep their kids safe at home for the remainder of the school year. However, this would not benefit children and only constitute a modest substitute, explains Dr Pauly, paediatrician at CHL:
"Just imagine that a five-year-old is supposed to learn how to construct a tower, how to climb a ladder, how to skitter down a slide, and how to do all this safely, from home. Children should moreover learn to imitate the language of their teachers."
It is therefore the time to find an appropriate long-term solution:
"People understand the strategy of the government and that our children's education needs to be prioritised before we can think about reopening leisure activities for the general population."
Prioritising primary school children would be contradictory, due to the increased infection risk. Nonetheless, understandable from a social perspective. The current confinement remains a blessing for some, and a curse for others:
"A modest family of three generations living together on 45 square meters, with one child becoming ill, chances are high that soon the entire household will be infected. So in the end, the measures put into place to protect citizens could end up being more harmful to those confined to limited spaces. We cannot hide underground forever and wait for Covid-19 to disappear. Like the generations that have come before us, we need to adapt to the novelty of the situation."
