How do we protect the prospects of posterity? We must make our own entertainment

Schools are closing in order to “flatten the curve” of coronavirus. The galling thing is that not even the medics think children are at risk in their classrooms. It is a classic example of an uncertain end being used to justify dubious means, with the interests of one group sacrificed for those of another. Nor does the Secretary of State for Banning Education, the squeaky-voiced Gavin Williamson, appear to have given much thought to distance learning. Tens of thousands of schools and half a million teachers will sit idle, when they could be put to use teaching children on Skype, YouTube, Zoom or any one of a dozen video link technologies. The best schools will do this anyway, and the richer, more enterprising parents will hire tutors. The rest will languish, forgetting even the knowledge they have acquired.

As for the decision to keep schools open for the children of “key workers” and “vulnerable children” — it is hard to imagine anything more invidious and destructive of social cohesion. The Prime Minister did not even say that these children would be taught normally in these “skeleton schools”, merely “looked after”. Williamson muttered something about a “means of redress” for parents who felt their children were being unfairly excluded, but how will any such procedure operate?

And this is before the question of public examinations is considered. Apparently the 4.5 million pupils who were to sit GCSEs and the 250,000 A-level students will now have to make do with an alternative method of evaluating their educational achievements. Neither the Prime Minister nor his contemptible Anti-Education Secretary appeared to have prepared proper contingency plans to reassure families that their future won’t be blighted. The disruption itself is bad enough, but this generation of schoolchildren deserves better than to be fobbed off with second-rate qualifications. Is it beyond the wit of Williamson to devise a scheme to enable tests to be carried out remotely, as the Open University (for example) has done for more than half a century?

This measure, which will deprive pupils of irreplaceable months of learning, is also bound to make working life impossible for their mothers and fathers. There are many jobs which may not be directly relevant to Covid-19, but still provide an essential service to the economy or the community. As for the advice not to leave children with grandparents: how exactly will it be enforced? And who else is going to step into the breach? Because there will be plenty of families where the breadwinner will go on working, simply because they have no choice, even if it leaves children unsupervised. The potential for some kids to go “feral” over the next six months is obvious — as if our towns and cities did not already face a growing challenge from teenage gangs and knife crime.

However deplorable, the situation cannot be helped. Most parents will, if they haven’t already, be faced with the problem of how to keep their children occupied. Given that London and indeed the rest of the country is rapidly closing down, the options are limited. Almost the only places where it is still permitted to roam freely are the open spaces of this green and pleasant land, including National Trust estates and other stately homes, forests and parks open to the public. We should make the most of our sites of outstanding natural beauty or exceptional interest, with which Britain is more richly endowed than any other country. There isn’t a child or indeed an adult in the land who would not benefit from rediscovering the great outdoors. In these isles of the blessed, you are never more than a few miles’ trek away from a glimpse of paradise.

Still, if sixty million of us were to suddenly put on our walking boots and set off into the far blue yonder, the whole object of social distancing would be defeated. It would not be long before new restrictions would deprive us of even this safety valve. So getting out of the house cannot be the whole solution to the childcare problem.

We must make our own entertainment. This is the message that needs to be heard, loud and clear, across the country. There are two great resources that we can fall back on: games and books. By games, I do not of course mean video games, although these are not necessarily antisocial. Board games, above all, but also garden games for those with gardens, even just kicking a football around or playing Keepy-Uppy with bat and ball in the park — these are the traditional ways in which children amused themselves.

And then there are books. Not every household has them, but we should all have access to public libraries. It is true that the tendency of councils to close these facilities will be greatly accelerated by the closure of schools, but there is nothing to stop local authorities from using volunteers to keep libraries open. Bookshops could be commissioned by the Government to provide a new online service to enable isolated families and individuals to obtain books at home, perhaps as part of care packages. If home deliveries become difficult, there are always e-books; neighbourhood schemes to share books already exist in some places but could be rolled out across the country, with the help of charities that run bookshops, such as Oxfam and Amnesty.

Reading and playing games are the two activities that will save our souls — and our sanity — during the long weeks and months ahead. If we have learnt anything since 1945, it is that the gentlemen in Whitehall do not always know best about what is good for us. Unless we take active measures to keep up our spirits, there will be an avalanche of mental health cases, including an epidemic of suicides. Old people especially do not only die of viruses; far more often, they die of loneliness. And young minds must be kept busy, or else they atrophy. Whatever we do during this unpredictable pandemic, we must not damage the prospects of posterity.