In the online class, the teacher is under test

Window Seat

A grandma sits on a narrow bench, all focus, taking notes from a teacher seen speaking on a laptop screen, while a little boy’s legs rest next to her, his head joyfully dangling upside down.

This image, to me, is a symbol of all things we have known that the lockdown has turned upside down.

Truth be told, the classroom was not on anyone’s mind when Covid-19 began wreaking havoc. Who even thinks of school in summer holidays? We had our priorities, like learning to say kwa-ran-tine and later aat-ma-nir-bhar. Parents hoped Corona would run away once the vacation was over, but this bad child virus? You couldn’t even tell it: Kneel down. Now, go stand up on the bench.

And so, around April, schooling itself had to ‘get out of the class’. Instead of running, sleepwalking into school, chatting and yakking with your best friend, you the kid had to now open the computer, or your parents’ phone, and see your teacher. Or if you were the teacher, you could see all your children in little boxes on your screen. Or not see them, as the kids could mute video, until you heard a ‘Yes Misss’ remotely after you had called out the roll number thrice, urhm politely.

That little brat that gave the teacher a hard time, that shy girl who would simply not open her mouth while Sir’s vocal cords popped out yelling at the class -- all those kids were now at home, dragged to sit before the screens by struggling, yelling, cajoling parents. Homework, projects, morning assembly, PT classes, PT (parent-teacher) meetings and SUPW (Socially Useful Productive Work that we did at school, as I learnt much after) – all things that made a school a school changed overnight.

Remote learning brought problems that neither the schools nor the parents were equipped to deal with. For starters, the glaring gap between smartphone-haves and have-nots. In a survey that Karnataka’s Department of Public Instruction did in May, only 58% children in Class 1-5 had internet connections or smartphones. Among students in Class 6-8, this number was 56%; 64% for those in Class 9-10. In other words, for almost over half the students of the state, no gadget has meant no school thus far.

Then, there are the good-old teacher troubles. The training to use new learning tools and technology to make education fun; optimising the teacher-student ratio, freeing up their workload – these issues weren’t even resolved when Covid-19 came and pushed teachers into the deep-end, to an online world in zero time, to teach the same syllabus to children who would receive them in unequal environments.

A friend shared on a WhatsApp group her primary school teacher-mother’s struggle to get on to a video call on her mobile for the very first time, making herself presentable, keeping lessons ready, handling a bunch of frequently disappearing kids -- while being kind and gentle. And wait for ‘feedback’. Some schools insisted that the teachers take screenshots every few minutes as proof of attendance. Some of them paid the teachers a pittance instead of regular salaries, while continuing to charge parents the usual or higher fee.

The sacred space that a teacher and students have had with jokes and scolding seemed gone for good, but another small problem came up. Mrs Janaki, the central character in a Tamil animation series that went viral, said angrily how the fathers go around in ‘small small’ shorts while she was trying to take a class.

Parents had to now house the ‘school’ inside their compact homes. For the working mother, that meant setting up her own workspace, her kids’, her partner’s, while also ensuring place, time and attention for the in-laws and other relatives. This, plus the cry for food from forever-hungry little monsters. The pressure of parents of children with special needs, that is another story altogether.

Fears of bad backs (like no kid was ever bent by those massive school bags!) and effects on young minds – all these factors forced the government to ban online classes for tots up to class 5. But pro-online education parents cried foul; the courts decreed that the government had no right to ban; so online classes were back. On his stay with us, I saw my nephew of 8 watch his cartoon, munching on the dosa he had not finished, while his teacher recited the 13-table loudly. In the next 20 minutes, he broke into a jig to Daler Mehndi’s Ta ra ra ra…it was time for online Dance Class.