Education and Emergencies: Can the children be prepared? 

Pakistan has witnessed one of the worst floods in recent days, which has affected millions of lives, homes, crops, cattle, and other things. Should we accept it as a natural disaster to justify these huge destructions? Or should we take responsibility for unpreparedness to deal with emergencies efficiently? Most importantly, if we wish for preparedness for such times, then what is the most effective approach that should be focused on?

Major disasters are predicted by scientists, geologists, and storm watchers to limit the damage to the maximum extent. With the advancement of technology, it is now possible to anticipate severe storms, blizzards, cyclones, and other weather-related natural disasters. Although, natural catastrophes including earthquakes, wildfires, landslides, or volcanic eruptions can still occur suddenly. A warning alert is occasionally given but is often very short and cannot help reduce disastrous effects. Flash floods and unexpected hail storms can severely impact areas that are not used to such disasters. However, despite technological advancements, numerous humanistic aspects must be undertaken to deal with such emergencies.

In emergency crises, children are the most vulnerable group due to their dependence on adults, in terms of their physical, emotional, and cognitive capacities, as well as their need for protection from emergencies and disasters. The future of any country lies in the well-being of its children, therefore, it is a responsibility to not only keep children safe from disaster but also to prepare them to deal with emergency crises efficiently.

In 2020, my colleagues from AKUIED organised the first-ever hackathon on the preparedness of schools for emergencies. Almost all the stakeholders of schools including students, security guards, teachers, management, parents, medical staff, engineers, etc. attended the event to hack the problem of emergency crises. An overwhelming majority of the participants highlighted the foreseeing issue of disasters that would affect schools badly.

Nevertheless, one of the takeaways was that schools are the most suitable hub for the preparedness of children to deal with emergency crises, as children spend a substantial amount of daily time in their schools. The forum of schools should be used to holistically develop them and equip them to handle challenging situations.

My research and experiences suggest that schools do not teach students to deal with what is or can happen to them in their surroundings; instead, they are obligated to cram content knowledge, even though students, themselves, need and want to develop survival skill sets. This is due to the lack of emphasis on developing students’ social and life skills in Pakistan’s educational system, which only places a focus on content-based learning. Interestingly, the role of family and society is also found limited to equipping children with basic life skills including their personal care, and enabling them to do household chores only.

Surprisingly, children are not prepared for dealing with emergencies either by family/society or by schools. It is therefore obvious that a country that has such minimal awareness and knowledge of risk management would not be able to respond to disasters in the same way as it has done so far by provoking severe destruction. Whereby, if our youth had the necessary skills to handle emergencies, the scene might have been different.

Introducing children to disaster education programmes is considered to be a cutting-edge method of catastrophe risk reduction, at global levels. The value of these programmes has been supported by numerous theorists, with a presumption that children’s perceptions of risk can be changed by education. Moreover, studies from different countries have found a positive association between education, elevated risk perception, and students’ risk-reduction efforts. However, simply providing the children with knowledge related to emergency crises would not suffice the purpose of keeping them safe.

The gap between knowing and acting on knowledge can be closed by teaching the children about the value of preparedness and preventive measures. To increase children’s resilience and provide them with information to lower the danger of disasters in their homes, disaster education needs to be specifically addressed in today’s schools in Pakistan. Thus, it needs to be initiated where natural and/or man-made disasters are frequent, as in Pakistan, to reduce the damages and ensure effective prevention.