The enraging pandemic is bringing a new Normal everywhere. Work has moved to houses and those people who are not able to work from home are losing their income and livelihood. It has not even spared the students. Elder children have missed their board exams and competitive exams. Younger children have missed their year-end exams and classes. With summer vacations coming to an end, and policymakers announcing that the education would shift into the virtual model, there comes a series of questions and concerns from all the corners. This blog is purely based on my discussions with my fellow parents and a few teachers on the trends in Online Education.
After the onset of the pandemic, one thing that’s becoming more clear is that irrespective of the money we make or the position we hold in the profession, all of us are equally vulnerable. All we need at this moment for survival are the values our age-old Indian system has taught us, which our elders keep practicing even till date. But in the ever-growing competitive world, we are moving far away from that culture and traditions. This is the time to take the stock and gradually move our children towards our Indian traditions and cultural values.
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So at this juncture, instead of using these online classes to teach the age-old syllabus why can’t our educators and policymakers think little out of the box. So that the stress on parents and teachers is reduced. It’s not that easy for the teachers to adopt to Online teaching and the same goes for the parents and children as well. Parents can not overnight become the assistant teachers to their children. In a country like India, all the parents might not even have access to gadgets. Even if they have access to gadgets, the parent’s knowledge to handle different subjects the kid is studying at the school might be at the rudimentary level. In case if both the parents are working, then who would take the responsibility of their kid’s online education part?
Are the online classes really needed for kindergarten and Elementary children? Even middle school children could also be included under this umbrella. Will they be able to follow and understand the teacher in this remote working manner. Instead, can’t teachers use this opportunity to connect with the kids using stories and songs from our traditional repository. Introducing them to the real world outside and teaching them life skills is the need of the hour. And this can be done through various fun activities online. Also, this would reduce the burden on the parents as well as the teachers. In the long run, we would be getting a generation full of individuals with high moral values and good character. Loosing out on the academic stuff this one year will not be impacting the kids in the long run. But not using this once in a lifetime opportunity properly would be a big loss for the society at large. If you don’t agree to this argument of mine, please look at the Phillipines President’s words below.
The secondary and higher secondary children need to finish their syllabus and get prepared for their competitive exams. But there also as the schools are not working, we can reduce their syllabus and add more stress to the value education. Morals and values are the things that are missing out in our kid’s life and we as parents, grandparents are solely responsible for this. That’s is the reason why we see the “Boys Locker Room News” kind of reports every now and then. So this Pandemic has given us the chance to take a step back and introduce our kids back to our cultural values.
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Don’t you all agree that it’s time that we parents take matters into our hands and make the educators and policymakers understand what is it that we want from education? What say, parents, how do you want to utilize this golden opportunity given to us by God?
