By TFL Mawlong
The anatomically ‘modern human’ appeared about 200,000 B.C. i.e. about 202020 years ago. If we imagine a TV series with each episode being of 2021 years duration, then today we are in the climax of the 100th episode of a TV series named Humanity. This 100th episode will end in the year 2021.
In the ‘climax of the 100th episode,’ we are seeing an epic confluence of Technology and Calamity. Mankind had not seen this much power of technology since the discovery of a powerful technology we called ‘fire’ by ‘Homo erectus’ some 0.2 million years ago. Till the middle of the 100th episode (1010 years ago), humans had been traveling on horses, oxen, donkeys, and sail-boat. Then suddenly at the ‘climax of the 100th episode’ wheeled-cart was invented, and then the train, the airplane, cruiser, submarine, and the electric car. Technology is exploding and today from commerce, medicine to governance we are empowered with Data, Artificial Intelligence, Machine Learning, and out of the world Surveillance Technology.
But paradoxically, nothing much has changed in the way education is imparted in our state, however, we saw the entry and the thriving of this crass, textbook-kind of education-system, even as the damn world stares every day in its banal clarity mocking our decrepit education system and hollow degrees. Did you know that for the last 20 years what has significantly changed in education are the tuition fees and the infrastructures only? There has been an increase in tuition fees by not lesser than 500% in the last 20 years. Did the burgeoning tuition fee bring any significant improvement in teaching? Nope! So while epic upgrades are seen in other sectors, when we look at our education sector in Meghalaya, it is like we are entering a ‘Parallel Universe’ (you may Google it) where we find education is characteristically slow to progress, slow to adapt and which has an alarmingly high degree of redundancy (in terms of curriculum, examination system, and teaching method). After failing how many generations, will our education system be declared ‘failed’? I could feel its dying breaths, but I guess we should stick to support the system till some dude dares to talk of enlightened anarchy in the Education World.
So I am curious as to what learning and education in Meghalaya will look like in a post corona world? Many of us have been spending quality time thinking about disruption in education. Concerns are being voiced about the horizontal educational inequality between the urban and the rural students during this lockdown. And words in the air tell us that a new normal has dawned in our Education World!
But I digress. My observation is: Covid -19 is just making education progress happen faster. The new ‘Education Culture’ has already been there much before Covid19, though it hasn’t trickled yet to most institutions including in Meghalaya. Even before the corona, many educators are already infused with the ‘generative power’ (which comes from being able to generate among us the desire to do better because we want to do better) for transforming education. Thus the Covid19 just accelerates the progress that’s already underway during the climax of the 100th episode in some pockets in India and the world.
Today we are in a situation that compels educational institutions to embrace online learning, so presumably, the majority of the educational institutions are utilizing the cyberspace in some way or the other. Though, to be honest, mere sharing of the bulky PDF-notes and assignments via WhatsApp or e-learning portal which many are doing is ‘hardly an e-learning way’. But I reckon it does serve to destroy the inertia (I wouldn’t say it’s a good start though). Anyways, it got me thinking that the compulsion to adopt remote teaching is making our middle of the road educational institutions falling by the wayside to struggle for modernity.
So when I hear the concerns about the horizontal rural-urban educational inequality it doesn’t stick much, to be honest. I mean look at ourselves, the urban folks, what learning are we possibly imparting to the students by just sharing bulky PDF-notes/Wikipedia contents to be downloaded and collected by the students, without giving any ‘textual’, ‘audio’ or ‘video’ explanations? And with the ‘overloaded rote-learning assignments’ our schools are giving to the students, at best we are just making them do the ‘mechanical copy and paste homework’. Nothing more! Homework is a great way to help students learn and develop. However, with our type of assignments (exam-oriented and rote learning type), sans exceptions, of course, there’s very little value added to learning and education.
Ergo, I would say, for the time that has been lost and some weeks to come there has been and there’s going to be no greater educational inequality between urban and rural students than it has always been there. At best we can say there’s has been a widening ‘homework gap’ as a result of this lockdown. If you think about it, in this lockdown, the rural children might be ‘learning and developing’ a lot through the story-telling sessions with their parents and grandparents, than they would have through school assignments.
But should there be a second or third wave of virus spread, and as urban and semi-urban educational institutions begin to adopt the best practices of remote teaching, I speculate there will eventually be a much greater urban-rural educational inequality than is already there today. And so I would state that in the near future, education breakdown in rural areas is imminent and we should plan to prevent that.
Let’s briefly talk about it. As we are aware, rural students are currently facing academic problems left, right, and center. One is the lack of good network connectivity. Two is the lack of access to digital tools (poverty-related). Three is the staggering ignorance about the intricacies of ‘online teaching and learning’. These constitute the education’s digital divide faced by the rural areas which have disrupted the young students’ education. The government should put extra effort to bridge this divide. Perhaps the most effective and ‘scalability’ way to ensure digital access to all students is through the ‘Tablet and Wi-Fi’ system. Rural teachers should also be given solid training on how to effectively and meaningfully use (not just sharing of PDF files) the available digital tools and they also need to be trained on how to tailor impactful educational materials/lessons for their students.
However, the reality is that majority of our remote rural areas will continue to remain poverty-stricken or may have no internet or slow internet speed for many years to come. Thus, in my opinion, one practical and fast alternative is for the government to launch the Meghalaya Education Television Channel to broadcast (statewide) the locally tailored video lessons of selected topics at least for class 9, 10, 11, and 12. It would be a wise investment. I believe many excellent teachers would be more than willing to volunteer in designing and delivering the lessons. Try it, and don’t regress.
To conclude, I call upon the academic institutions in our state to limit bureaucracy to the minimum, and to ‘incentivize’ and provide the teachers with a ‘supportive environment’ so they may fearlessly and freely ‘innovate’, ‘initiate’ and ‘experiment’ the pedagogies because that’s how education can progress. I abhor the school, college or university authorities when they act/project themselves like State executives or bureaucrats because it is unsuitable for academic institutions. And perhaps it is high time for higher educational institutions to set up a kind of “Institutional Digital Council” in their campuses to study and research the digital best practices in education and then tailoring and adopting them in their campus in a way that is practicable, affordable, effective, characteristically local, and sustainable. Besides, in this era of information overload, such a council can curate, build and maintain a Digital Resource Library (a sort of e-Lab) for the students and teachers on the campus and train students and teachers on how to learn digitally among many other things.
Trust me later you might say, ah! we didn’t realize it would turn out so good! And, pathetic as our education system is, we might just be able to elude dead-ends!
If educational institutions want to remain relevant in the 101st episode (of a TV series named Humanity) they better adapt and reinvent. This Covid19 crisis presents a great opportunity to do just that. Our higher institutions need to develop the urgency and capacity for technology and more importantly for a new Education Culture otherwise 10-15 years from now they will become irrelevant for the society because the ‘hollow and rote learning degrees’ will surely be of much lesser value and even useless in the near future! The old road is rapidly aging, we must reinvent or crumble to bits!
(The author’s views are personal. He is merely expressing his thoughts on the education culture with utmost sincerity and has no intention to directly or indirectly insult any academic institution)