l The photograph a mother posted on a social media platform was shocking. It showed a room with an 8-year-old child in front of a laptop with a bored look writ large on the face. But the focus of the picture was something else -- the mess around in the room. The teacher had asked the ‘class’ to collect at least ten items showing one common colour. The kids had to collect such ten items in five different colours and show those to the teacher on the screens of their computers. It was only natural that in just a few minutes, the whole room was in a chaos of unprecedented nature as the kid scurried around the house and collected those fifty pieces in a few short minutes. “Who will clear this mess now?”, the exasperated mother asked. THIS real-life difficulty demonstrates to all of us that it may not be easy to evolve a saner system of on-line education.

 

This little anecdote also highlights the importance of a fresh thinking on the issue by the entire school system. The challenge is not limited just to issues of management and arrangement, but expands into the abstract domain of the child’s interest. The look on the face of that child -- in the picture -- cannot be missed. He was terribly bored, and obviously uninterested in the whole thing. But because his mother gave him a constant and rather agitated gaze, he sat for his on-line class as the schools began in some parts of the country. Yes, the challenge is far more serious than we may think -- how to retain the children’s enthusiasm and interest in the on-line mode? The kids in the higher classes reach better levels of maturity stemming from the realisation that they must go through the ordeal. However, for the kids in standards one to four, for example, things are pretty difficult. For, these kids represent an age-bracket where attention spans are limited, and practical interest-ranges encompass the whole world. So, to keep these kids stable during the on-line classes is very difficult.

 

Of course, the parents and teachers and school managements do realise this, but there appears no joint effort to find effective solutions to the practical difficulties. Before the last summer vacation began, the children had a sense of hope that things would improve in the next session. But that has not happened, and the on-line mode with all its trappings of drudgery has continued. If this is going to be the way of life for the next full year, then the problem of forcing the bored kids to sit in front of their computers every day for 2-3 or even 4 hours will be a challenge whose answer we must find out. Some people tend to indulge in shooting-from-the-hip mode of suggesting solutions.

 

That is not going to help. Perhaps, the educational thinkers and planners will have to sit down together for hard, no-nonsense thinking on this issue. It is here that the larger society and the educational community will have to come up with a more mature approach whose core value will have to be patience. Yes, the teacher gave an assignment to the kids -- who scurried around in homes to collect so many items as per expectations. That led to a chaos, and the mothers or families will have to bend down and backward and forward to clear the mess. This is only one small physical aspect of the practical difficulties in the on-line mode of education. There are multiple other aspects whose answers the society is expected to find as effectively and as early as possible. This is one issue that cannot escape our attention.