By Banlam K Lyngdoh
Of late HIKAI, an online educational portal, launched by RKM Ashrama, Sohra, in collaboration with Vivekananda Cultural Centre (VCC), Shillong, has been publicly debated on its pros and cons. Thanks are due to Dushyant Wadhwan, who has gone the extra mile in attempting to dissect HIKAI (albeit superficially), in his letter to this newspaper captioned HIKAI – a headache for teachers (ST, 12/07/2021). As an insider and a teacher involved in HIKAI, after giving a serious reading of Wadhwan’s observations, I feel it is important to put things in clearer perspectives.
HIKAI is an immediate and timely response to the sudden halt of normal schooling following the onslaught of the Covid pandemic in 2020. RKM Ashrama Sohra, has over 10,000 students under its wings and it is imperative that these young minds should not suffer collateral damage as far as their education is concerned. It is proven, historically and psychologically that any continued and major disruption of normal life affects children not only in the present but also has the potential to make them future losers in many fronts of life. Left unattended and unengaged with mind building activities, children are prone to go wayward and hence their vibrant energy gets channelized into unwanted ends.
Though started in 2020, it is only this year that HIKAI has been implemented in full throttle. Last year the portal was operated on a trial-error method (technically speaking) where pre-recorded videos on different subjects were available for the students to watch. Submission of assignments was not overstressed because offline teaching was also allowed by October-November, and the term end exams also could be conducted offline. However, the Covid trend now seems to reinvent and linger, putting the student community in disarray. This has motivated the Ashrama in Sohra and the VCC in Shillong to modify and upgrade the portal enabling both students and teachers to study and work from home so that a semblance of serious work for teachers and educational engagement for students is in place and constructive and consequential results (not only academic, per se) achieved.
But this is not to say that acceptance and success should come overnight. It is too early to make a judgment call on HIKAI. Even now HIKAI is in an evolving mode. But whatever is said, the point that this portal is created for the sole benefit of students should not be understated and overlooked. If we are ready to accept that this is for our children, then whatever we would have to say would be only towards its enhancement.
Yes, one may find some aspects of the endeavour to be wanting. Firstly, connectivity is a serious circumstantial issue. But this should not be a stumbling block. Gradually the mind-set of both parents and students should change and once the mind-set changes a hurdle is just something to be overcome. If parents accede that this is for the future of their wards, then they too should try to leave no stone unturned in seeing that their children derive the most from it. A friend, a relative somewhere is there to help. Questions can be downloaded and sent across. Students on their part can write a heap of assignments on a weekly basis and travel to the other end of a village where connectivity is good and ask a friend or a relative or a well-wisher to help in uploading them. Surely it takes a village to raise a child. You will see that when you desire for anything intensely, the entire universe collaborates to make it happen. Impediments will always be there for a new thing to function and it takes the cooperation of all stakeholders to make it a success. I reiterate on the change of mind-set, because this is the only way for any initiative to become a blessing. If in Meghalaya, this mindset change had not taken place when education was offered to the local two centuries ago, where would we be? Then poverty was rampant coupled with superstition. But because gradually people’s perspectives changed, we are now where we are.
Secondly, most teachers are rural based who haven’t faced the camera in their entire life until very recently. Some of them are on the verge of retirement and to whom modern gadgets are rather an encumbrance. They never dreamt that they would experience such a drastic change. But desperate times call for desperate measures. In spite of their camera shyness and clumsiness with the tools, they are trying their best for the sake of the students, and in the process exposing themselves to the judgment of all and sundry. Believe me, we may be good and fluent educators speaking with confidence in the class room, but we may be found stuttering in front of the camera. As mentioned above, we are evolving.
Nothing can be further from the truth than to say that HIKAI is a headache for teachers. A workload may be, but certainly not a headache. Since Mr Wadhwan has spoken personally to one teacher, whose views he values and shares with the world, let me also be personal. In fact, I encourage students to send their raw footage to me. I continue giving them instructions over phone or WhatsApp. If that doesn’t suffice I offer to help them. And I know of many RKM teachers who do this. Only a day before I got a call from one teacher in Zakabari who wanted clarification on a certain assignment of the subject I teach. He told me that he and the teachers in his school help the students in everything except (he joked) on writing their assignments. And one thing is worth mentioning here. It is not that the management monitors our work from home. We may sit in front of the screen following the normal school hours or we may burn the midnight oil, that’s up to us. But that the management should know that both teachers and students are sincere, a minimum submission of 80% of the assignments is a must.
Which brings me to my last point, why 80%? In normal school mode, generally schools make 80% attendance a criterion for students to be allowed to sit for a term end exam. Irrespective of students’ performance in other domains, they have to satisfy this condition. Regularity reflects sincerity and responsibility. But considering the newness of the programme and the direness of the times, this demand is never made draconian in HIKAI. Yes pressure is given to all stakeholders but that too by extending and re-extending the deadline. All students were made to understand before the first term online exam, that they were eligible to appear only on submission of 80% assignments. Most students didn’t comply. Yet all were allowed to appear for the exam. We gave the defaulters a chance to still submit their assignments before publishing their results. Those who complied got their results. But for defaulters we extended the deadline further and further and further to the extent that teachers are overburdened with correction of both first term and second term assignments. Why so much trouble? Is it not that we want to see all children through considering theirs and their parents’ lack of resources? All we are doing is creating avenues for the horses to be taken to the water. Whether they bend down to drink or not it’s a different matter, and here a modicum of students’ sincerity or insincerity becomes apparent. But one should not be blamed or critiqued for showing them or taking them to the water.
(The writer teaches at RKM HS School, Sohra. Email [email protected])