From Disruption to Recovery

Striving from our usual routines to some disruptions, the onus is on us to work together towards recovery. While some otherwise unimaginable changes induced by COVID, the change in the lifestyle of students is something that bothered me the most. 

The early morning chit-chats that started around 6.30 am when small boys in their perfectly ironed shirts and shorts and girls with two plats and nicely pleated skirts used to wait in the neighborhood for their auto-rickshaws and school buses. The buzz when they returned around lunchtime with their soiled clothes and numerous stories for the mums and dads. With the passage of at most two hours, we could again hear and visualize scattered noises, with some going for tuitions or extracurricular class, some to playgrounds, and others for a walk with their grannies and grandpas. Seeing all this commotion from a distance was in itself joyous.

Well, it’s been more than a year now, and they are stuck to one corner of their rooms for hours at a stretch. With eyes fixed on the laptop or mobile screens, they are forced to follow a non-negotiable routine. However, this is not something to complain about. What other option did we have? Online education was our best bet, given the situation. This brings us to an even bigger question!

Is Online Education a replacement for Physical Education?

Hmm, ‘replacement’ would be a strong word. And no, online education can never be a permanent substitute for in-person education. Only through a group physical presence can we guarantee a holistic approach to education for our students. With this as a primary aspect, the affordability and accessibility to the online schooling system for all come as a glaring truth. The same is evident through a UNICEF report that claims to have impacted the education of around 25 crore children in India in the last one year.  However sad it may sound, this is something obvious and known to us. 

Let’s consider a well-to-do family as starters. Even for those, I don’t think the answer is always a Yes for the below questions

? Do the parents have laptops for their kids and themselves as well, considering they are working parents? If not, then the kids must be depending on their parents’ smartphones, and mobiles are something working people need most of the time. Must be tough to manage

? Are the parents working and need to go out daily to their office? Then who is watching over the children and keeping a check on their activities and online time? What about the problems they face in connecting to digital devices and the internet. Children are not always that trained?

? Are they working from home? Then sure they have their own share of work, work pressure, stress, and enormous use of the internet, and requirement of space? Does our country’s current internet coverage cater to these problems all the time?

Now, if this is the picture of families that are better-off, we can surely imagine (or probably cannot imagine) the state-of-affairs our less-endowed people and families are going through.

Reopening of Educational Institutes

Some states and UTs have started opening schools and other educational institutes entirely or partially. As we see schools coming out of the hesitation and taking a step forward, most parents are still not convinced about sending their little ones to school. Well, they stand justified as no one would want to put their child in harm’s way. So the structure of learning these days is something like 5 to 6 students in a classroom, while others attend the same class online. Albeit this is a whole new and interesting way of schooling wherein both in-person and online education could go hand-in-hand, there would be a need to open schools at full-scale down the line.

Having said that, let’s see what measures can our schools, staff, and parents collectively take.

• Sanitization and disinfection of the classrooms, playgrounds, and the entire school building with an effective and safe sanitizer/disinfectant. Safety would mean considering that there may be kids in the school with respiratory and other problems making them sensitive to few disinfectants.
• Availability of hand sanitizers outside each classroom. Inculcation of the idea of cleanliness and hygiene in students.
• Thermal screening of students and staff. Availability of dormitories, beds, isolation rooms, nurses, and doctors to cater to any emergency situation.
• Appropriate seating arrangement for students. The chairs and tables to be rearranged accordingly.
• Use of masks by students, teachers, and all staff members. Students and, for that matter, everyone would need breathing time from masks from time to time, which can be done when in a class or place with the maintenance of appropriate distancing. 
• The distancing, sanitizing, and wearing masks also apply to school vehicles for transporting kids. 

I hope to say this soon enough, Happy Schooling Kids ☺

Avani Raj Arora