All schools and colleges in Meghalaya have opened up and others are opening soon albeit with all precautions in place. As always there will be two or more views about this. It’s the typical Hamlet dilemma – to be or not to be. But with growing scientific evidence the world over that lockdowns have only caused more misery than saving lives and this being the third year of the pandemic, more studies have shown that a complete lockdown of schools and resorting to the much-touted online classes and more so the online examinations have set back the clock for many a child. In fact the Education Department of Meghalaya and perhaps even the Social Welfare Department have a bounden duty to conduct a quick survey to see how many children, especially in the rural areas of the state have had zero learning since March 2020 till date. The results would help the State to reconfigure how to go about providing remedial classes to bring up to scratch and to stem the tide of school dropouts which is already quite high in the State.
Besides the normal learning environment, what school students have missed more than they can explain is the social bonding with peers and the physical presence of teachers. In most schools in rural Meghalaya, parents were visiting the schools to collect homework for their children. Most parents are illiterate so how are they expected to help their kids with the homework? Teachers don’t seem to have considered this vital aspect. Actually teachers were directed by the Education Department to visit homes and check on the children’s progress with their studies but very few teachers did that. And they cannot be blamed for failing in their duties since all were afflicted by the fear psychosis of moving around when social distancing was the norm.
The much talked about online classes were as good as non-existent in rural areas where internet connectivity is very unstable. But even in urban areas online classes were a new phenomenon for teachers not trained to use technology to teach students virtually. In the earlier stages of the pandemic it was trial and error for teachers every day as they tried to learn the ropes. It was not possible for students to ask questions or to interact with teachers and with one another. That was like the snapping of a social umbilical cord that makes life worth living for humans. Parents unused to spending so much time with their kids found it fatiguing to deal with them and to become teacher, mentor, parent and friend all at once. However, precious lessons were learnt and losses have been counted. Now teachers have become more empathetic and parents more understanding of how much it takes to teach a child. A new beginning is being made in the teaching-learning journey and also the realization that ‘education’ is much more than book knowledge.
