The Black Hole in the COVID-19 campaign in Korea: learning

A recent brief investigation of the work of some learning cities in the Republic of Korea indicates that they have been engaged in a variety of ways in supporting the COVID-19 prevention campaign. I discovered amongst other activities:

1. Learning city volunteers have been working together to produce cotton face masks;
2. They have also been supporting self-quarantined people by providing food and telephone calls for psychological comfort;
3. Learning city on-line programs have provided public health information and community activities;
4. Especially, learning city activities have provided for those most in need of help, elderly people who are confined to their homes, something to read, or to watch programmes by accessing on-line VOD programs webcast by the local learning centres via YouTube or other methods.

These activities in themselves, however, are limited in effects and efficiency.

What I think in general is that the COVID-19 measures can be divided into four different parts:

1. Bio-medical measures (testing, caring, and curing);
2. Political/administrative leadership (order of lockdown, quarantine, supplying materials and equipment and keeping economy operating, etc.);
3. ICT and mobile use (tracing the infected and monitoring self-quarantine);
4. Individual and social consciousness and civil activity such as social distancing and providing a caring community approach (behaviours and knowledge that are strongly linked to "learning").

Overall, the fourth part has been too little emphasized. Though 'social-distancing' is a key issue, we have not focused enough on 'human learning' that enables people to behave in ways that are appropriate to the current challenges. However, there are some promising signs of co-ordinated developments in this area. The Korean Association of Lifelong Learning Cities has begun to provide webinars, and also a survey on how learning cities have prepared measures to cope with COVID-19. Each learning city has been sent a questionnaire concerning city policies, budgets, difficulties, roles of Lifelong Learning Centres, and long term plans to cope with the situation.

Subscribers to PASCAL might have read the about 'night clubs in Seoul', and the resurgence of the second wave of the confirmed cases in Korea (not serious yet). This is definitely related to the fourth part of the structure. Despite medical, political, and technological supports being excellent, peoples' behaviours and knowledge can easily create a black hole in the campaign.