Education and covid 19

         Education and Covid 19

In India, the first case of Covid 19 was detected in Kerala in  January 2020 and a nationwide lockdown was imposed in India in March 2020. Whole economic activities were shut down, schools were shut down. The steps taken by the government were great at that time. Although we have seen several problems arise because of stringent lockdown like the migrant crisis.

In this blog, I will focus on the education system during covid 19. 

 March is a crucial month for exams, but Because of the lockdown board exams were delayed and lower classes were promoted without any examination. In some way or another, states tried their best to take board exams.

 After that, the real challenge came, schools were shut down and no physical interaction was possible between the teachers and students. It was like the summer holidays for students. They were having fun but they forgot what exactly schools are. 

We cannot blame anyone for this, in India, we do not have a culture of online education because it is not even possible for a country like India to provide online education. There are several reasons for this like 

• poor connectivity,

•  poor penetration of the internet in the villages, 

• expensive internet packs etc. 

Online education is not everyone's cup of tea. For example, if one house has 3 children then every household can't give mobile phones or laptops, to each child. According to a Remote learning reliability report In India, only 24% of households have an internet connection to access e-education. Well, we can't blame families for this also 

Not only this but we are not even ready for online education. old traditional methods for teaching like the Blackboard system. Our teachers are not tech-ready. They don't know how to use a writing pad, and how to set up a virtual class and even how to manage them. Because they have never experienced such a situation before. Yes, there are schools in urban areas or in big cities where they managed to run online classes, but what about rural areas and small towns? 

A survey conducted by Pratham Ngo where they found that about 20% of rural children have no textbook at home and  1 in 3 rural children had done no learning activity at all. Teachers used WhatsApp as a medium to send homework to students but what is the purpose of this? Without teaching are students able to do their homework? Then We have another story for KG students, what do we think a four - five-year-old child learns from virtual class? No this is not our culture. We need physical interaction with the teacher to learn at least for primary class students. It is not that we learn the alphabet or numbers from school but students also develop peer groups which not only develop them physically but also mentally. These are the crucial years for child development. The goal of education is not to increase the amount of knowledge but to create the possibilities for a child to invent and discover, to create men who are capable of doing new things.

    Covid 19 shows us the reality of our education system. New education policy 2020  is a great step towards this. But this will take time.