Isolation

Having been advised to stay well away from people due to being in the at risk catagory re the Coronovirus I like to think it’s mainly because of my health conditions and certainly not my age. Which proves this isolation has not taken my ability to think wishfully.
It is that ‘thinking’ part of isolation I’ve been thinking about over the last few days. I now realise I just can’t stand at the front window and make faces at the number 11 bus as it passes to and from town. I’ve run out of funny, (mostly crabbit) faces anyway.
So, I thought, what am I going to do? Then it dawned on me. There are people all over the world that have been isolated for years and are still there. Political prisoners hidden away in small cells with not-one sound, except that sound of torture from afar or slops squeezed through a slot in a door. My house isn’t that bad.
Then I remembered that I used to be a community educator and all the people I’d worked with, auld folk, parents and the kids and I remembered the fun we’d had learning from each other, and the progress many of us made.
I thought about the Open University and the group of parents attending classes in our community centre and how much the challenge of learning affected them and gave them hope.
Then I got to thinking. If one has to be isolated then this must be the age to be in. We have food delivery services. A great many of us have PHONES, (so please phone your friends and family regularly), Many, but not all, have TV and some have internet access, (so make sure you email or facetime or Skype your people regularly).
Now here’s the rub in all this thinking I have decided to come out of retirement and become a community educator. Dinnae worry over much about what this means as I’m not sure myself but what I’m proposing is that all those who are isolated, or indeed their friends and families whose worries and anxieties will be through the roof at the moment begin a course of learning.
The Curriculum, as they call it in more hallowed circles will be yours. It might be something you’ve always wanted to study but didn’t have the time that you have now. It might spring from what you see from your window, (not the number 11), or something in your house, (a vase, a piece of electrical equipment, a brush or broomstick).
We can teach each other to cook, to bake, calming techniques, poetry, creative writing, (God forbid), anything that takes our fancy really.
Maybe we could start with a dedicted facebook page? Maybe we could have dedicated times for telephone learning and we can all be both teachers and learners?
Community Education came out of the need for survival. For the need to progress from the hardest of times. Lets do it.
Alan