Despite pandemic learning losses, some Latin American nations declare absurd school holidays | Opinion

Latin America is one of the world’s regions where schools were shut down the longest during the COVID-19 pandemic, so you would think that its leaders are desperately trying to recover lost learning by extending the school year. Instead, the opposite is happening: Some leaders are declaring new — often ridiculous — holidays.

Argentina’s President Alberto Fernandez declared a national holiday on Sept. 2 because of an ill-fated attempt on Vice President Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner’s life a day earlier. She escaped unhurt after a gunman apparently tried to kill her, but his gun malfunctioned.

The fact that nobody was hurt didn’t prevent Argentina’s populist government from declaring a national holiday and closing down schools to allow her followers to attend street rallies in her support.

That was only the latest example of new school holidays in the region that are triggering outrage among education experts amid a rapid decline in Latin America’s academic standards over the past two years.

According to a recent report by the McKinsey & Company consulting firm, Latin America, alongside India and its South Asian neighbors, had the world’s longest school closings during the pandemic.

Latin American children lost on average 11.7 months of schooling during two years of the pandemic starting in February 2020. By comparison, children in East Asia lost only 6.6 months of schooling, in North America 4.3 months, and in Europe 3.6 months, the report said.

“Lower levels of learning translate into lower future earnings potential for students and lower economic productivity for nations,” the study said. It estimated that pandemic-related learning delays could lead to a 2.2% annual drop in Latin America’s GDP growth by 2040, compared with a 0.8% decline in North America and a 0.7% drop in Europe.

And yet, most Latin American countries have failed to extend their school calendars, and some are happily adding new holidays as if they weren’t in the midst of a major learning crisis.

In Perú, which already had 16 school holidays commemorating military battles and other historic and religious events, the government earlier this year declared June 24 a national holiday to celebrate the “Day of the Peasant.” In addition, the Peruvian government recently added a one-time day of school closings on June 13 to allow children to watch the Peru vs. Australia elimination game for the Qatar World Cup soccer tournament. Australia won in overtime by 5-4 penalty goals.

In Venezuela, there are so many school holidays that the 2022 school year could be effectively reduced to 165 days, compared with more than 220 days in countries like Japan, according to the Venezuelan Education Observatory independent monitoring group. Among the Venezuelan school holidays is the Feb. 4 anniversary of late dictator Hugo Chavez’s failed 1992 coup attempt.

To make things worse, the upcoming Qatar World Cup may result in many more school days effectively lost in the region.

Argentina’s education minister Jaime Perczyk posted a tweet on July 15 stating that, “The world cup is a sports and cultural event that’s very important” in Argentina, and that therefore, “We think that Argentina’s games should be broadcast in schools and imbued with content.”

This is all happening while Latin America’s “learning poverty” has risen faster than anywhere else since the pandemic, according to a June report by the World Bank and UNICEF. Learning poverty, measured by 10-year-olds’ ability to read and understand a simple text, soared from 52% to 79% of Latin American children between 2019 and 2022, the study says.

“The last thing I would do in Latin America these days would be to declare a new holiday,” Jaime Saavedra, the head of the World Bank’s education department, told me. “On the contrary, countries should be cutting vacation time, or extending school hours.”

What’s most alarming is that Latin America’s growing learning poverty is not even part of the region’s everyday conversation. In most countries in the region, it’s far behind economic or political issues in the public agenda.

In fact, the region’s pandemic-related academic decline, which has worsened its already worrisome education deficits before the pandemic, is probably the one issue that will affect the region the most in coming years.

Unless countries wake up and go into a war-like offensive against academic decay by extending school time and focusing on quality education, instead of declaring foolish holidays, future generations will be doomed to greater poverty.

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