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Covid hit education hard, new thinking needed
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- The story: Due to a surge in Covid-19 infections in the Second Wave of infections, the education of students in the entire India is affected. When lakhs of schools and colleges remain shut for months together, there is a structural problem India must prepare for.
- Points to note: Online education was envisioned as an alternative means of spreading education, but it too fails, given the Indian students’ conditions. India is unlike Western nations, where basic amenities are a given. The availability and affordability of this system poses a barrier. While e-education is a privilege for the students from an upper and middle class, it has proved to be a nuisance for students from the lower middle class and people living below the poverty line.
- Long-Term exposure to internet: There are also implications of longer exposure to the internet for these young kids. This may create impediments to the development of the thinking process in the younger generation.
- Analytical thinking: The other important question is about the learning outcomes of online education. Google is the prominent and only platform to all queries, and as a result of that, students are not thinking on their own. Scientific outlook was the key parameter stressed upon since the inception of modern education in India. With time, we find society regressing on science, and it is imperative to not let the young generation of today lose its scientific temper.
- Increasing student isolation: Due to the pandemic and lack of physical classroom teaching, a peculiar feeling of isolation is developing in the minds of students. That’s a very serious issue. The trauma of the second wave will put a deep imprint on the student’s mind. Physical interaction and activities have been entirely absent, and that may also be contributing to new problems.
- Solutions: The whole infrastructure should be fully utilised, and if necessary, many more facilities should be invested in (and created) to impart education. As classroom teaching gives us the opportunity to impart many more things apart from information. Then comes content. Institutions should contemplate new content generation for each subject to overcome the absence of classroom teaching within the framework of the existing syllabus. This content would be of a new type, self-explanatory, and considering the lowest IQ of the class, it has to be attractive. The content should produce the same effect on the minds of the students that the best book imparts on the thinking faculty.
- Human touch: The teachers and non-teaching staff should visit the locality of the students (in and around the school area) on a weekly basis to supervise the whole work. They should take notes on the problems faced by students in understanding the reading material and also whether things are reaching them on time.
- Evaluation: The evaluation should be based on the capacity of analysis, and the questions should be framed in such a way that students need to apply their minds to answer the questions on each subject. In addition, the government should take the responsibility to vaccinate the whole teaching community as fast as possible to advance this learning process.
- Government initiatives:
- E-PG Pathshala - An initiative of the Ministry of Human Resource Development to provide e-content for studies.
- SWAYAM - It provides for an integrated platform for online courses.
- NEAT - It aims to use Artificial Intelligence to make learning more personalized and customized as per the requirements of the learner
- PRAGYATA - The Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) released guidelines on digital education titled PRAGYATA. Under the PRAGYATA guidelines, only 30 minutes of screen time per day for interacting with parents is recommended for kindergarten, nursery and pre-school.
- National Programme on Technology Enhanced Learning - The NPTEL is a project of MHRD initiated by seven Indian Institutes of Technology (IIT), along with the Indian Institute of Science Bangalore. It was started in 2003 and its aim was to have web and video courses in engineering, sciences, and management.
- Summary: The Covid-19 has shown the extent to which the Indian system of education exploits inequalities. It's time to set the record right.
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