8-year-old Aadhi*, a class 2 student at a private school in Vepery, Chennai, is dressed in his uniform at 9 am and waits for his classes to begin. Once the Zoom link pops up on his school WhatsApp group, the child, who is well-versed with technology, connects to his classes. With his mother by his side, he remains attentive for five minutes into the class but begins to fidget with his uniform after that.
Making him sit through the course of one-and-a-half hours becomes a chore for his mother, Smitha*. For six days a week, two classes per day are taken. “The first period will begin at 9 am and end by 9.40am while the second period will go on from 9.50 am to 10.40 am. All the subjects are covered on a rotational basis. On Saturday, the last period will be art and craft,” says the mother.
The school has made attendance compulsory and all the pupils are required to attend classes in their uniform.
“Once the classes are over, the teachers assign homework for students. The children miss wandering around and seeing the outside world. They sometimes feel like they are locked up in the house. The classes and homework just give them additional stress during this time,” says Smitha*. In some classes, the child pays attention but eventually forgets, she adds.
Smitha* is forced to sit with Aadhi* for the whole duration. “Whenever Aadhi* doesn’t understand something, he turns towards me to ask doubts. We keep the mic in mute to avoid unnecessary sounds and I also see other children refraining from asking doubts,” she says.
Morning Zoom classes have become a routine for Aadhi* for the past one month. When asked what he learned in his Zoom classes, he contemplates and says, “I learnt Maths. Noun and pronoun in grammar…. but I forgot the rest.”
However, he adds that once the lockdown is over, he will surely buy a pair of binoculars to see the birds flying in the sky.
Taking classes for students through Zoom has become a norm in many well-known institutions in Chennai. Not just the secondary or higher secondary classes, but even the primary sections and younger students are forced to go through the routine.
According to the parents, the teachers say that they are conducting classes since parents keep demanding that they do so. However, the parents say that only a small group of people demand that the school administration continues with classes while others don’t want their kids to suffer.
For the next academic year, the state government on Friday announced its decision to release e-books for class 10, 11 and 12 students.
However, online classes and access to resources remain elusive for government school children. Many of these schools don't have basic infrastructure and classes through Zoom and laptops are a distant dream. The Tamil Nadu government has a free laptop distribution scheme that provides laptops to students of government and government aided schools. However, the beneficiaries of the scheme are only higher secondary students.
Online classes undertaken in private or government institutions are likely to be discriminatory, warns educationalist Prince Gajendra Babu. “Online classes will not give access to an equal education system. During the time of a pandemic, when your family or your relatives are in a crisis, the institution expects you to attend these classes,” he says.
“Even if the students have access to infrastructure, when their fellow Indians are dying, the institutions are just going to teach the children to aim for a gold medal. This kind of approach can only help market driven MNCs. But this cannot be education,” Gajendra Babu alleges.
Stating that education is not reaching a heterogeneous crowd, the educationalist adds, “Online class is not a substitute for classroom education. Once the pandemic is over, classes should resume and only after completing the portions in the classrooms, exams should be conducted. If the government announces exams based on online classes, then the exams are discriminatory and should not be conducted.”
Quoting various research papers which reportedly prove that stress reduces immunity, he says, “There are several researches that prove that stress decreases immune power. By taking classes, we are giving the children stress and indirectly decreasing their immunity."
*Names changed to protect identity