We were in the ninth standard, in 2009, when we got to read The Fun They Had by Issac Asimov. The plot was set in the year 2157 when children used to study at home, alone, with the help of a robotic teacher. We were intrigued by the thought of it. We were amazed at how technology would have evolved by then eliminating the need for physical schools. Naturally, children of our generation hated studies. We went to school for only one reason. Meeting our friends. While at it our teachers somehow managed to make us study and get a hold of the concepts. Those were some fun times. So, the thought of not being able to come to school to see our friends was rather revolting.
Fast forward to ten years later. It was the year 2019. It was just another year for us millennials with its plethora of problems. But, little did we know that towards the end of 2019, a great pandemic would hit the world and change the lifestyle and livelihood of many people all over the world. It was the year the world first heard about a new virus infecting and killing people in a place called Wuhan in China. People thought it would never come out of the Chinese border. But it did and how! No corner or crevice of the world was left untouched. Every metropolis, city, town, and village was affected by the dreaded virus. Standard Operating Procedures were put in place and testing centres were put up at entry points of all nations. Despite all measures, the virus entered, killing millions of people worldwide. Towards the end of the first quarter of 2020, almost the whole world came into lockdown – a standstill never witnessed before.
Along with millions of constraints created by the lockdown, one was the education of children. Administrations, governments and parents came into uncertainty and insecurity about the education of their children. Question was, how were they going to continue the education process in the wake of a pandemic? During the initial days of the lockdown, schools, college and university classes were completely closed, bringing a sudden halt to the education process. Although everyone was worried beyond any measure, the students nevertheless, were overjoyed by the closure. It could be because the general hatred towards studies remained the same since before our generation, but the reason to go to school never remained the same.
Students in the 2000s mostly played outdoors. They would be running all around the school halls and fields playing actual or made-up games. They used to lie down, wrestle and get all muddy and dirty in the fields. Indoor games were out of the question. The ones who had video games were one of the elites and cellphone video games were just Snake or Space Impact. Those were the times when education came from books and recreation came from outdoor games. But maybe those were the last days of the era. The 2000s was also the period when technology was booming. TVs, cellphones, and computers, all were evolving, making the user experience much easier, thereby engaging more and more users. I saw a cellphone where you could interact with apps just by touching the screen in 2010. It was amazing. By 2013 I had my own touchscreen phone. And now that I look around every school-going child has a touchscreen phone of their own. Using it for various activities, from learning new stuff to playing video games.
To check the pandemic, the government announced a nationwide lockdown. The SOPs stated that schools from now on would be online. That was new for the people. While many from the student community were acquainted with online classes, the idea of it was limited to college-goers and some non-scholastic courses. But even then people started getting acquainted with the new normal. Children started attending online classes. Teachers explained and students learned. Even the ones who had just started schooling. A child in our neighbourhood was admitted to school in the year 2020. He went to school for 45 days, which includes holidays and Sundays. Just after 45 days of class nursery-level schooling, his school got converted to his parents sitting with the cell phone, where his teachers would send the daily class materials and his parents had to make sure that he wrote his alphabet and read them as well, to be sent to the teacher over Whatsapp. Whatsapp became the new medium of schooling. It may be fine to share notes and study materials if you are a grown-up. But what a child needs is an environment. Education for a child cannot be just sending homework over a chat app. Education is so much more than that. For a child, experiencing a physical school is more necessary than a grown-up teenager or a college-going young person. A child cannot get a hundred per cent of his education online.
Then, there are some other children who are in their primary standards and middle standards. Their school is them sitting with the cell phone of one of their parents and attending class in an app called Zoom. Some privileged ones get a laptop but mostly it’s a phone. The problem with lower-middle-class people and the usage of video chat is the data usage limit. Children sometimes exhaust the limit which makes it hard for them to attend any more classes for the day. Moreover, cell phones have always been the villain in the story of education. And that too, for the right reasons. Along with Zoom class sessions, the cartoon or ‘funny video’ channels are seeing greater footfall.
Children wanting to stay inside and watch, whatever they are watching (assuming nothing regressive or wrong content), is never a good sign. But the pandemic has bound everyone who is a student of any age to their rooms. This lack of physical activity is clearly leading to a lack of motivation to study. Adding to that, postponing, if not cancellation, examinations, is proving to be very destructive to the mindset of young students to study. Once a teacher told us that a teacher can never know a hundred per cent, but he tries his best to give us whatever he can. Of that, a student gets only seventy to eighty per cent. Of that, she retains only sixty per cent. But still, with the right amount of guidance and studies, the student aces any examination inside and outside the hall. But nature had other plans. In the wake of this pandemic, albeit online classes have become a new normal, it is difficult to understand their efficiency and I wonder whether or not these little children will ever get to experience the fun we had.
