Page 251 - e-Kongre Bildiriler Kitabı

The other major plague was the Spanish Flu and the schools are closed for the first time according
to the recordings. It had been a hard time because of World War II and the schools were closed but the
practices in terms of continuity of education were not recorded. In USA the closure process was applied
in a regular and systematic approach. At some places the closure lasted for fifteen weeks and at some
places for six weeks. The closure process was examined by the researchers and one of them is carried
on the effect of the closure and it was seen that IQ levels of the school children decreased and they also
did not tend to continue their education after the pandemics because they had to support their families
and work.
In Turkey the only and nationwide school closure was recorded in the times of Spanish Flu.
Besides this, local school closures are recorded because of hard weather conditions, earthquake etc. Tekir
(2019) investigated the struggle of Turkish Republic with epidemics between 1923-1930 period. The
most common viruses are malaria, syphilis, variola, scarlet fever, trachoma, diphtheria and tuberculosis.
He used documentation method and examine the way of struggle but not education. Another study is
conducted by Yamamoto and Altun (2020) on coronavirus and rising of online education. They analyze
the precautions and the online systems of the countries, especially in Turkey. The study focused on five
main titles and these are: regulations, infrastructure, human resources, content and applications. The
study emphasizes that online education programs and applications should be included in emergency
action plans. When the MONE Action Plan for Emergency is examined it is seen that there is not any
item related with pandemics.

It can be said that COVID-19 is the first and major pandemic event that affected nation and world
along with nearly 1.4 billion students. The situation is not the same when compared to the early decades
or even to the beginning of the 2000s. The students are named as Generation Z, digital natives etc. Also,
the families are responsible for being both parents and teachers.
There are studies related to SARS, H1N1, epidemics and education (Blagojevich, 2006),
(Hargreaves, 2003), (Fox, 2004) and after the outbreak of COVID-19 the academics tend to examine the
effects of the pandemic over education, the relation between the pandemic and education etc. Howard
and Howard (2012) interviewed teacher after H1N1which is one of the major pandemics. The study
suggests that teachers are on the front line of the epidemic and pandemic events because of the nature of
teacher-student relationship and it is found to be important to educate people as precautions

Kekic and Miladinovic (2010) carried a study in 2010 about infectious diseases and functional
education system and they recommended that school administers should give place to education of
students and parents in order to prevent the spread of the disease. Onyema et al. (2020) examine the
impact of COVID-19 on education and the results of their study show that there is a decrease on the
level of education and the technology found insufficient in learning-teaching new information. The
student debts increased and there are many factors that are poor in order to continue the education such
as: poor network connection and lack of digital skills. Mustafa (2020) examine the impact of the school
closures and there are found numerous reasons such as; childcare problems, bad nutrition, economic
problems whose families could not go to work.
It is important to examine the life-changing events and their effects over education systems and
this study is focused on the pandemic COVID-19 and language education practices during these times.

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