Recent pandemic across the world supplemented with lock downs, work from home, on-line classes, webinars, satellite hospitals, tele- consultations, remote treatments for patients, etc. have brought forward a world of new dimensions and new practices. While accepting the importance of such practices especially when people are confined to home for a long time it has exposed many immersed truths. Leaving aside pros and cons of work from home I would like to focus my observations on on-line classes for school students and that for college students.
Internet has become a boon for
the society at large but what about those who find it hard to gather his daily
basic requirements at this difficult time. But then, why shall I bother about
those poor who are least concerned in my life. Well, I don’t expect to sleep in peace when my
lighthouse is surrounded by darkness all around. Can you? By the way, my
intention is not to analyse poverty levels across this vast country.
Casually walking around my housing
campus, I discovered that at least for few morning hours most of the building
blocks convert into virtual class rooms! My ears could catch ‘Ba-ba black sheep…’
coming out of some window to Einstein’s Theory of Relativity from another. As I
climbed up the stairs ‘Ree..enga reeengaa rousess, poucket fooll of…’ peeped
out through someone’s door. As the music faded, heard a stern voice, ‘Ankush
Mehta mute your-self!’ Yet in the second floor I could hear voices thronging
out from my opposite building, ‘Tell two directive principles in our
constitution.’ Entering my flat I could hear, ‘Children am I audible? Can you
hear me!... find the HCF of two twenty-five… using factorization method’ blah…
blah! Entering my other bed-room I could see stern eyes of my daughter not
happy with my entry! Classes going on, thanks God she is using head-phone. I
know if the teachers could discover family members moving around in the room,
the kids will be questioned, rebuked.
Observing the activities of
schools and colleges during this pandemic, as an unwanted spectator I could
conclude one thing – these institutions run after targets and nothing else but
targets! Every teacher has his or her own target like target for conducting
number of classes, target for achieving students’ participation or attendance,
target for providing assignments, class-tests, project works, and anything one
can guess. Then again, most of these targets run on weekly, monthly, quarterly
basis! To achieve this, they may be ignoring about the kid’s own plan of
playing hours, leisure hours, story hours (when the grand parents are around in
this lock-down situation), study hours, home-work hours, co-curricular activity
hours and of course eating hours and sleeping hours too. For my elder daughter,
I saw classes commencing at 9 PM too when the whole family is supposed to sit
together and finish dinner. It’s all with the presumption that children are at
home, and they are the living organisms who have nothing else to do all
throughout the day (and night) other than attending whimsical sessions!
Being from corporate sector I can
well understand that targets play a vital role in one’s professional career as
the career growth, promotions and impressions all depend upon our performances
which is measured only in terms of targets vs achievements. Presuming
replication of the same in the schools and colleges as well, as a parent I
wondered whether our ambition and wishes for our children’s development are
really taken care of. Is there any yard-stick for measuring whether a student
has really understood his or her subjects and its contents? I saw many
out-spoken and smart kids hijacking the classes with endless interruptions,
answering to questions bounced by the teachers now and then. What if any kid is
not smart enough or not out-spoken? He or she will very much run into
depression due to negligence by the teacher. This is more so, because teachers
also seem to remember only those students and the same is being reflected when
they call out only those specific favourites for getting a response. Majority
of the classes revolve around the teacher and his or her few pupils while
majority of the lot remain as silent spectators. Will it not down grade a good,
disciplined, obedient student who religiously keep muted as advised by the
instructors. This can be a serious concern from a kid’s psychological point of
view.
My idea is not to undermine the
efforts and hard works done by a teacher to carry out such tasks. Nor a teacher
can be error free or that they are super-humans. My questions are to the creator
of this system, the institutions, which are probably ignoring many practical
realities which need to be rectified and addressed on real time basis. It is
understood that such new style of conducting classes can have some inherent
faults but it is more important that those faults are identified and addressed
appropriately in no time. Otherwise, all the good intentions will benefit only
a few while many will remain without reaping the fruits.
