Children and schooling in the post-COVID-19 era

Syllabus: General Studies Paper 1

Context:

• The pandemic has revealed the limits of our wherewithal to look after the collective needs of children during a calamity. A child in the family has a radically different status from that accorded to children as a collective entity in our country.
• The pandemic has revealed that society and state institutions prefer to ignore the conditions under which the family copes with the demands of childhood.

Peripheral concern

Children’s education and health are two major domains in which welfare policies of the modern state are expected to support and enhance the family’s role.

• In both these domains, the policy framework reflects a minimalist stance, both in terms of financial investment and institutional strength. In policies as well as in their execution, there is considerable diversity and disparity among the States. The overall picture suggests that childhood is of peripheral concern. Gains made in this context have proved difficult to sustain.

The pandemic’s deep effect

• The structures and procedures created under the Sarva Shiksha Abhiyan during the decade preceding the Right to Education (RTE) were not perfect, but they marked a new beginning in the direction of local autonomy and devolution of power.
• These fragile structures required nurturing on a long-term basis. Neglect and decay set in quite soon in regions where the system was weak to begin with, and then came COVID-19.
• However, several recent surveys show that the pandemic has left the entire system ravaged. Even something as basic as a meal for the youngest age group ceased. Teaching switched wholesale to the online mode, leaving it to the family to cope with the demands hidden in this medium.
• India was unique in the fact that even the very youngest age group was covered by online teaching. With the reopening of schools, the outcomes of prolonged exposure to digital devices in confined spaces have started to be revealed and documented.
  • The vast majority of children from lower socio-economic backgrounds could not access online teaching for reasons totally beyond their control.
  • And among those who did have access to online lessons, rates of comprehension and progress were quite low.
• Academic losses are compounded by emotional problems. A survey carried out by the Vipla Foundation has traced the kinds of stress children experienced at home. Exposure to domestic violence, prolonged hours in front of TV, especially among boys, and addiction to digital sources of entertainment are among the various outcomes of COVID-19 confinement.

How to tackle this?

Systemic recovery will be tough. The time required for recovery will depend on imagination and resources.

• Case study– A significant beginning has been made in Tamil Nadu. A committee chaired by Professor R. Ramanujam has been asked to prepare a three-year recovery plan and a new curriculum. A major problem this committee will need to address is the addictive effect of prolonged online teaching. Devices such as the smartphone induce small children into a seductive bond that may not be easy to shake off. Restoring children’s innate desire to relate to the world physically and socially surrounding them will constitute a major step towards educational recovery. This will demand de-addiction from digital instruments.
• exclusive dependence on digital machinery has resulted in a radical expansion of its market. It has also permitted digital activism to mutate into an ideological doctrine of progress. We need to listen to child psychologists and teachers of young children.
• Also the teachers had little say in decisions and no autonomy to do their best. Distrust in the teacher cuts across the deep divisions that characterise the system.

Insightful report

A new United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization (UNESCO) report titled “No Teacher, No Class” gives recommendations in this regard.

• Prepared by a team of scholars at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences, this report tells us that India is facing a shortfall of at least one million school teachers. The report makes several key recommendations.
  • The first is: “Improve the terms of employment of teachers in both public and private schools.” Some of the other recommendations are:
  • value the professional autonomy of teachers,
    build career pathways, and, above all,
  • recruit more teachers.

If sound, research-based advice is what we need for rebuilding the system, it is available in this excellent report.

The Hindu link-

https://www.thehindu.com/opinion/lead/children-and-schooling-in-the-post-covid-19-era/article37918167.ece

Question- Discuss how the pandemic has affected the school education in India.