Lesson learned: Children want the real thing

“I don’t want this school…I want the real school.”

This scream of a six-year-old broke the morning calm as I was just entering my cousin’s house last week. After seven months of seeing his best friends only on tiny video-boxes, his favourite teacher’s face come up only on his mother’s laptop, and half the time hear her only say “don’t mute the video Priya, come to the screen Atul”; of not being able to play on the swing and push down each other outside class, and not eat from four tiffin boxes when ‘Miss’ said it’s lunch time, Kanna, my nephew, was done with online schooling.

And he is only one of those millions who will be moving to the next grade in school -- without moving to school from home all year.

Worldwide, Covid-enforced virtual schooling has not been one bit easy on the teachers who have had to adapt overnight to go digital in teaching. Or, as teacher Nandita Naresh put it, to control a classroom remotely without having a remote control. And when they manage to teach, to bear with the sight of shirtless dads and working-out moms.

It has not been easier on parents either, in matchbox houses, room full of things, in-laws, children, their gadgets and their chargers. But both these sets of people have the advantage of age. To me, the most impacted are those that have been on the planet for only a few years.

These recent arrivals may think this is how the world is, or has always been. Some kids, as parents said in an online poll that I did on my social media, are actually liking it this way: They get to bunk class while being in class; play parallel online games while a teacher rambles on and are thus ‘absent’ even when ‘present.’ The home classes, it turns out, are also good for kids who used to be bullied in school, or for those saving up the commute time for a sport they can now learn seriously.

But what of those kids for whom a whole year has been ruined, all because they had no smartphone at home? A NITI Aayog report says only 30% of parents of government school students own smartphones.

While on a visit to Belgaum last month, I spoke to Shobha Gokak, an activist and a child dropout herself, whose organisation has been working right through the pandemic in 40 villages of three taluks in the district to persuade parents to not pull their kids out of school. Education has virtually come to a stop in many places as the adults have had no work or income at all. Poverty, and parent talk inside the homes, has forced children to take up menial work. Many kids, Shobha said, feel that even a hundred rupees that comes in, is used up for the family, so school – even when it reopens to a normal physical classroom setup – is sure to take a backseat.

But in a few other places, innovation has replaced lament. A report by Azim Premji University cites the example of MLAC -- Mohalla Learning Activity Centre -- in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh, where ‘Ekalavya’ teams take learning materials down to hamlets where these kids reside; forming a synergy between government schoolteachers and local youth who pitch in.

In Karnataka’s Koppal district, village schoolteacher Somu has used tools from the government programme ‘nali kali’ to take classes in a temple in the village, the kids love it. Shamshiya, another teacher, prints worksheets with her own money and works with students as well as with parents, building a community.

So, the year has been a mixed bag for children. If this continues, my nephew may learn to not miss school. But I am sad there is one thing he won’t experience: Punishment. Imagine a full year of no chalk thrown or “hey you, stand up on the bench” for bringing the wrong book to class!