Lourdes Alvarez has been content to have her two college-age daughters at home with her in Guadalajara every day during the pandemic, while her husband runs a manufacturing business and the young women study online.
“As a mother, I’m delighted. I like their company and we can do things together,” she said.
“My impression is that their universities are going well online, even though [the changeover] was very surprising,” she adds. “Despite that, I see the academic part working excellently, and the teachers fulfilling their responsibilities well and punctually.”
However, Alvarez’s positive opinions may lie at the outer limits of any satisfaction chart, since other parents, teachers and students, even her own daughters, report more reservations, although, remarkably, none report much dissatisfaction.
At the negative extreme are very young students, their parents and their teachers.
“My son wants to return to presencial classes as soon as possible,” says the busy father of an 11-year-old who has been in online classes for months via the American School of Guadalajara. The parents had to hire a private, English-speaking tutor to come to the house six hours a day three days a week to sit beside their son at the computer. Otherwise, the boy might wander away, his father reported. The tutor also helps with homework and physical education, for example, by recording the boy at a park or doing exercises.
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