Written by: Mr. Harsh Yadav
Learning how complex systems work is important for older students to fully understand the impact of COVID-19. While explaining concepts to students in school we often break them into parts or simplify them. Sometimes, that can stop them from appreciating the crisis from multiple angles.
These are some points that can be brought into discussion:
1. Having multiple causes and solutions to a problem - The success of tackling COVID-19 is not just based on government efforts alone but also on individual efforts. Since any individual can be a carrier of the virus, it is important that we mutually practice measures like physical distancing and proper hygiene.
For example, this teacher taught kids about the importance of properly washing hands using an creative experiment!
2. Exponential Growth - Students can understand that the extent of the virus spreading cannot be explained simply by adding the number of patients. The concept of exponents (squaring and raising them to exponential powers) can be helpful to help the learners appreciate how the virus spreads. This means that if 1 individual as a carrier infects 4 other individuals, then these 4 individuals could possibly infect 16 more individuals. Each person can act as a source for multiple infections.
3. Common Outcomes - This happens when we tend to become lax in our efforts because others are doing the same. For example, if one person starts hoarding groceries, others start doing the same and forget their social-ethical responsibility. Such a scenario can lead to an urgent shortage of essential supplies.
4. Systems and their limits - Each system has a limit to how flexible it is, or how much it can adjust. It is important to understand these limits. It is also important to understand small changes that we often ignore that can lead to a crash of a system. For example, climate crisis is a slow phenomenon that often may not be observable in the everyday. However, it will crash if we push it past its limits.
Read more about this here.
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