debate topic - online class should be included during school hours.... for or against
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Answer:
The COVID-19 outbreak has disrupted the academic year, cancelled classes and examinations across the country. To ensure that students do not miss out on their studies, schools moved classes online, forcing students to attend lectures via their gadgets. However, this has also sparked a debate on whether the increased amount of screen time helps students learn or if it impedes their progress. While Maharashtra has banned online classes from pre-primary to Class II,
Also, many children, especially those attending government schools, are being deprived of education during the pandemic as they do not have access to online facilities. They are actually missing out on their lessons. Though some families may have access to digital technology, there might not be enough devices for the personal use of all the family members. The parents may be working from home and need to use their computers. So, each household needs to have several gadgets that they can distribute among all of them so that that is really not possible for a large section of the population.
Many schools are holding online lessons for children in kindergarten as well. What are the dangers of exposing children to screens at such a young age?
Exposing children to screens from a young age is not right. It can hamper their overall development. The light emitted from the screen can strain children’s eyes and could lead to vision problems throughout their lives. Watching a screen is also a passive activity that can make children lethargic and affect their thinking skills. Schools should also keep this in mind while creating online content for younger kids. The lessons should be designed in such a way that the child only spends a few minutes looking at a screen. This can be done by integrating different activities into the lessons.
raise the spectre of screen addiction
Many countries have started re-opening their schools. But in India, where metro cities — Mumbai, Chennai and Delhi — are reporting an increase in the number of COVID-19 cases, is it viable to open schools?
What’s worrying is the fact that the entire conversation has shifted to the use of technology. It is not just about computers and smartphones, even watching Doordarshan amounts to screen time. Nobody (in India) is really talking about turning schools into safe places, where education can resume. Education is not just about information or content delivered to students via screens. It is about a lot more.
students complain of eye and ear problem
Schools may be reopening abroad, but we cannot compare that to the situation in India. The schools that have opened in these countries are taking utmost precautions. For instance, they are using tissue boxes for every class. Students can dump their used tissues in these boxes. But the waste generated is so huge, and it will also require to be discarded safely. Do Indian schools have that kind of infrastructure? Also, it is difficult to make children sit in the classroom wearing masks, without touching it. Or for them not to touch other children and their masks.
What will education look like once schools reopen post COVID-19? Will online lessons continue and what will be the learning level of the students?
There is a large section of the population that is unable to access technology and that’s a huge concern. Children belonging to migrant families might have moved far away from their schools. I know government school teachers in Delhi were trying to reach some of the students whose mobile numbers they have, but they are not able to reach them, they have disappeared. And these are kids who are going to be out of school soon. We don’t know whether their families will return to the cities and what’s going to happen to them. Teachers are doing enough to develop better online modules, based on activities, but how many children are benefiting from it? The problem is that our policy has always neglected the marginalised child. That is why we still have so many children who are not in school. All our policies tend to focus on those who already have access to certain facilities. We just forget the invisible — the poor and the marginalised.
Northeast waits for a faint signal from a distant tower
So what are the alternatives that can ensure that students don’t fall back academically because of this or any other pandemic that might arise in the future?
During this pandemic, many of the policy fault lines — across all sectors — Going forward, we have to start thinking on these lines. We need to improve our education system in such a way that we do not have to keep schools closed in such situations. We need to make it possible for the students to have a safe environment in schools even during a pandemic.
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