Learning in times of Covid-19

School education matters a lot - to school managers, teachers and students. Parents do not go to schools as such but issues concerning school education do come home to them. Waking up their wards at the crack of dawn five (or six) days in a week, getting them ready, prim and proper, with the uniform clothes, shoes, socks, neck-tie, school ID badge and the bag-load of books strapped on to their wards’ backs.

Clutching the lunch boxes, water bottles in the hand, and hurrying up the road even as the school bus starts honking at them early in the morning. It is okay that the parents do it all for their own wards, duty bound and lovingly. But thereby, they share a portion of the school education process.

After the school hours are over, it is at home for parents helping the young ones revise the day’s lessons, guiding them to do the homework and briefing them about the periodical exams, besides getting them to work on projects and assignments. Tutoring the student takes place as much at home as it takes place at school, in the classrooms.

Besides funding the education of their offspring, parents do invest considerable part of their time and efforts in the process of education of their little ones. So, parents’ role is as much complementary to the endeavour of schools in imparting education to their little scholars.

Now, this process has all been disrupted during these days of the coronavirus pandemic. With classroom learning having gone online, learning of lessons has been reduced to about two to three hours a day. For pre-schoolers, online learning is less than one hour in a week.

Learning in the environs of a school campus is not at all there. And participation of students in extra- curricular and related academic activities incidental and necessary to learning has been totally absent.

There are no PT coaching, no sports on the school play grounds, no visits to school libraries, and no interaction between teachers and the taught. But the amount of tuition fees being charged by schools has very much remained the same.

No parent, worth the name, would grudge spending money on the education of their wards. But considering the plight of many parents facing loss of jobs and livelihoods, reduced salaries, dwindling incomes from professions and rising costs of living, the predicaments of parents during these hard times are unenviable. Besides, many parents have had to invest in buying electronic equipment and devices for internet connectivity to enable their wards to participate in online classes.

Hence, the demand by parents that a certain portion of the tuition fees being charged by schools be reduced, commensurate with the loss of classroom learning, away from the studious environs of school campuses with students being denied of opportunities of engaging in extra-curricular activities that form part of the process of education. This would be one side of the coin.

Stressed out

The institution of schools as such has also been as much stressed out during these hard times. The advent of the pandemic and the resultant, prolonged general lockdown in the past few months have turned everything topsy-turvy. The process of education has been hit hard, just as all the other spheres of activity have been affected.

We read and hear about the predicament of teachers who have been getting reduced salaries. Many have not been getting salaries, and still many more have altogether lost their jobs. There are instances where such of them have taken to such diverse work like selling of fruits and vegetables to eke out their living.

There was a newspaper story about a college lecturer, having lost his job, having taken to tending to sheep and cattle for earning his livelihood. Such plight of teachers is most poignant, to say the least.

Many others, such as the school administrative, non- teaching staff, men and women manning the school buses, and the others associated with incidental work are put to hardship, too. And there are school managements - saddled with the cost of maintaining the school premises, labs, equipment etc.

In between is the student community, which is at the receiving end during their formative years of schooling years. The most unenviable thing of the whole matter is, the present, all-pervasive, general helplessness of all the stake holders in education. It would, therefore, be better if the community of parents comes together on an organised platform in respect of each of the schools, for discussing matters, and for evolving solutions.

That should be so because of different gradations and standards presently being pursued by schools in the process of imparting education. Again, such organisations should consider coming under a broader umbrella body of sorts for evolving a set of standard, general guidelines applicable to both school managements and parents. It would be better if all this leads to establishment of an organised set up to handle the complex system of education.