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Swine flu disruptions & IB


Dreamer94

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There's quite a lot of hysteria going on about swine flu and the possibility of its spread around schools in here. As a result, students just can't seem to go back to school! The Ministry of Education keeps pushing back the date we go back to school. Public school students were meant to be back on the 20th after Eid break, but they've pushed it back to October 4th, just like us (if that seems bad, kindergardens & special ed schools are pushed back to Nov 1!) . In all fairness to our much-loved ministry, about 60% of private schools who opened before public schools (private schools didn't care about Ramadan, heat, and swine flu - they made us go back at Sep 6--and oh--that date itself was pushed back as well considering we were supposed to go in the 1st) reported cases of swine flu in their schools.

So, in a nutshell, we can't seem to be going back to school without the threat of swine flu looming on us.

The problem is, for IB students, it seems to be both a blessing and curse. Sure, we have more time to study - considering if that there's even one case of swine flu, the whole school is shutting down for a week - but at the same time we keep getting farther and farther away from finishing the syllabus. It's just like what my IB math teacher said, "The IB doesn't wait for anyone or anything."

Many teachers are resorting to teaching us in the vacation. My history teacher is planning on us getting together in the weekend for 4-5 hours to finish our lesson.

So basically, many IB students are getting frustrated at this issue. We want to have more time to study, but we also don't want teachers hastily trying to get done with the syllabus.

UGHHHHH...Sorry for the rant. Thoughts?

Edited by Dreamer94
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Hello!

Well I must say i feel sorry for you. In Estonia we don't have that problem that schools would be closed. Although some people still are hysteric about it. If i even remember correctly the place whatever it was called that lowers or raises the level of pandemia and diseases lowered the swine flu rating. Which seems to be a good thing. Although... The issue of getting through syllabus can be solved with internet... In my opinion the same thing atleast for IB that is done in class can be done through internet. So if I could I would suggest teachers to use some sort of internet tehnique.

I might have gone out of your topic but that's my idea. And swine flu can be prevented with hygiene. So what i am saying is that schools should not be closed by swine flu but proper actions should be taken to keep the flu from spreading.

Best regards

Karl!

From Estonia - Weathers s**t again :P

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I think it's a bit drastic to stop students from going to school because of Swine Flu. Not much is known about it yet, so it may turn out to be not that harmful, then it will have affected lots of student's learning for no real reason. And I do agree with you Karl, about how swine flu can be prevented with hygiene, like every other cold and flu.

I live in Victoria, Australia which had the highest number of cases in any one state in the world, and yet, I only knew one person who had got it. The government realised they can't keep closing schools and locking people inside their houses, so from now on, schools can't be closed.

I really think it's no different to the flu, in its severity and its frequency. Lots of people die from the ordinary flu every year, and heaps of people also get the flu each year, and schools are never shut.

I hope you can go back to school soon, as I think doing the IB without the teachers there would be quite difficult!

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If it were the case of school being canceled for one week and then no more breaks, no one is going to do a big deal about it. But in Bahrain, being a small country and all, plus the overwhelming power of the press, people will dramatize this thing until the schools finally shut down for good.

Last week, the Ministry of Education said that if even 1% of the students in Bahrain contract swine flu, then all schools will be shut down for the rest of the year. It's a very likely option though - a lot of private schools, known for having much less numbers of students than public schools have had to close down because of swine flu. Now, with public schools opening, one might wonder when that 1% will prevail.

It's reasonable for other Arab countries to do it, but not Bahrain. Egypt said it would cancel the school year as well if it spreads, but in all fairness it does have 80 million people, compared to Bahrain whose population hardly reaches one and a half million. Saudi Arabia is thinking about pushing schools back to November, but they too have a good excuse: 40% of their population (around 27 million) is under 19 years old. If it's likely to really spread somewhere, it's going to be in that group.

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Due to the Swine Flu outbreak in Mexico last year, 5 exams were cancelled in all Mexican IB schools:

- All Bio and Environmental Systems papers except the Option Papers

- History Paper 3

You can only guess how angry everyone was...

What happened with the overall marks for those subjects? were the final exams held or were they cancelled altogether?

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