Page 48 - EW FEB 2022

International News

UNITED STATES (ACE) says, “that these decisions don’t bar institutions in
Compulsory vax confusion states that don’t prohibit vaccine requirements from mov-

ing forward with their policies.”
ACE argued during the initial outbreak last year that the
pandemic was so severe that it required a federal bailout of
US higher education, and it succeeded in convincing Con-
gress to provide nearly $70 billion (Rs.518,000 crore) in
emergency assistance to shuttered campuses. Now, with the
US death toll from Covid hitting 800,000 and the Omicron
variant pushing it higher, some of those same beneficiaries
— having collected as much as $200 million apiece in fed-
eral recovery aid — are among the institutions refusing to
make masks and vaccines compulsory.

BRAZIL
Sobral revolution

WHEN AMAURY GOMES BEGAN TEACHING
Vaxxing at Georgia University: compulsion blocked history in Sobral in the mid-1990s, its schools were
a mess. The city of 200,000 people lies in Ceara, a
EVEN AS THE COVID OMICRON VARIANT surge baking-hot north-eastern state that has one of Brazil’s high-
is shutting down US campuses, dozens of institu- est rates of poverty. When local officials ordered tests in
tions have quickly reversed mandatory vaccine 2001 they found that 40 percent of Sobral’s eight-year-olds
policies after a federal judge blocked a Biden administra- could not read at all. One-third of primary pupils had been
tion requirement for them. These institutions, mainly in held back for at least a year. Staff were not much better,
politically conservative southern and western parts of the recalls Gomes. He remembers a head teacher who signed
US, suggest that the court ruling means they are no longer documents with a thumbprint, because she lacked the con-
allowed to impose vaccination. fidence even to scribble her own name.
The ruling by Stan Baker, a Trump-appointed federal These days Gomes is the boss of a local teacher-training
court judge based in Georgia, doesn’t itself outlaw vaccina- college, and his city gets visitors from across Brazil. In 2015,
tion mandates. But the judge’s rejection of the Biden policy Sobral’s primary-school children made headlines by scoring
leaves many institutions subject to the orders of their state highest in the country in tests of maths and literacy, a mile-
government leaders, who have embraced and amplified stone in a journey begun almost 20 years ago. The pandemic
Trump-era hostilities towards face masks and vaccines. has thrust the city back into the spotlight as a model for edu-
The likelihood of renewed campus closures is made clear cators seeking to reboot schooling after lengthy closures.
by Cornell University, which shut its main campus in central Success stories are important to Brazil’s beleaguered
New York state and shifted final exams online after tallying educators, now more than ever. Before the pandemic (as
more than 900 new Covid cases in a week. Cornell has been in India) only about half of children could read by the time
mandating on-campus vaccination all semester, and as a they finished primary school, compared with nearly three-
private institution it is not affected by the Biden mandate quarters in other upper-middle-income countries. In 2017,
or Judge Baker’s order against it. the World Bank warned that it could take 260 years be-
In one announcement typical of the public universities fore Brazil’s 15-year-olds are reading and writing as well as
halting their vaccine mandates, Northern Arizona Uni- peers in the rich world. Since then many Brazilian pupils
versity says the court order “for the time being prohibits have missed around 18 months of face-to-face lessons as
enforcement of the vaccination requirements for federal a result of school closures (most have now reopened). Few
contractors”. The University of Wisconsin-Madison, end- countries kept classrooms shut for as long. Data from Sao
ing its requirement, says the judge’s decision and other un- Paulo suggest that during this period children learned less
specified legal processes “may impact our campus’ ability than a third of what they normally would have, and that the
to require the vaccine”. risk of pupils dropping out tripled.
The leading US higher education association counters Jair Bolsonaro, Brazil’s president, seems to have no
such interpretations, making clear in written guidance that meaningful plan to get teaching back on track. Even before
the federal court ruling — upholding a claim brought by the Covid-19 his educational policies were meagre. He said he
University System of Georgia and several state government wanted more schools to be run by the army and for Congress
allies — only lifts the federal mandate. “It’s important to to legalise home-schooling. Yet his chaotic administration
note,” the 1,700-member American Council on Education has not made much progress towards even these eccentric

48 EDUCATIONWORLD FEBRUARY 2022