There is no doubt that the World was changed by Covid and the long periods of isolation which everyone endured. We may now be able to meet up with friends or family, but the months of limitation on our liberty and the requirement to keep to strict laws has impacted on all of us: particularly young people.
As tutors and lecturers, we need to be aware of this. In some ways this makes the links to British values in learners’ everyday lives easier to point out but also, in some ways, more challenging to explore.
During the Covid crisis everyone could see a democratically elected government making laws which we were all told to obey. For some, elected leaders were taking care of the population with lockdowns, the closure of schools and the purchase of vaccines. Others saw the Covid lockdown experience or the high UK death rate as failures of democracy.
Some interpreted media coverage of the parties at Number 10 as a sign that those at the top, who had been elected, believed they were above the law; others thought that partying at Number 10 was irrelevant. There is a real danger with those in high-profile public positions not keeping to the rules they have made because this can undermine faith in democracy.
