Help your Kids Find out about the Coronavirus

Daily pills to help students (and families) organize their study in Covid-19 times, when almost one billion children have seen their schools close. Signed by Marcello Bramati and Lorenzo Sanna, deans and teachers at Faes high schools in Milan. As reported by Time magazine, they are teaching online during the lockdown, in an ongoing experiment in remote learning. Every morning at 8.30 a.m., their advice, tips and good practices for students of all ages.

In such a peculiar time, family life and study aren't enough. This is the right moment to start and ask oneself serious questions and to investigate reality. A first step is to find out what is happening, in the place where you live, but also in your own country and in the bigger world.

Global epidemics have been narrated by apocalyptic films and have been studied in history and literature classes. But Covid-19 affects your neighbour, your relative working as a doctor or a nurse, it makes you worry for the grandparents. In other words, it changes the scenario and the perception of reality, no longer immutably serene, but fragile and uncertain.

News reach us everywhere, from every screen, from every microphone. The first thing to do is to make everybody understand what's going on. Reality and the present belong to everyone, so it is also up to the younger ones to try to understand current events.

But the kids should be careful of excesses, on both sides: media often give space to catastrophists and deniers, launching bombastic titles that are not supported by what follows in the article (or by sense of reality). It is time to check and select sources, therefore: first of all, by listening to official bodies and competent people.

Between a tweet from a showbiz figure and a statement from a head of a virology department, it's time to give credit to the latter one. Although it will be less telegenic, less mediatic and perhaps less reassuring. To understand, it is necessary to dig with patience, research and listen. It takes time, but time is not lacking in these strange days.

Finally, extend the research. With your help, kids can visit istitutional websites, browse scientific reports and look at university dashboards that show trends in real time. The virus can be a key to approach reality in a new, different and deeper way.