Who knew that the year of 2020 will be an obstacle in terms of learning and education? A year that has been declared as global pandemic. The state government’s decision of banning the online classes or e-learning till class 5 had mixed views among the parents. This began as a Twitter war, as is fitting in our information technology times. So, is it fair for e-learning to be banned in Bangalore and other places in India? “The pandemic is not ending any time soon, and the government doesn’t have feasible alternatives to ensure that childrens’ learning and development doesn’t suffer because of school closure. Why does the state government adopt strategies proposed by the Center?” Said Nooraine Fazal, founder of Inventure Academy. Her point was understood when she thought about concerns over screen time that would prompt to also ban watching TV and playing video games.
E-learning included everything, starting with video classes to webinars for the students to study from. A parent raised this concern by questioning how playing video games for hours at an end can make e-learning a meaningful time for engagement and learning?
The parents of the students showed mixed emotions. Some parents were extremely happy about the ban, while some parents thought that e- learning is better than no learning. There are many parents who are furious with the way e-learning is being implemented and they say that rather than banning the entire practice, schools and the government need to take on better measures. But on the other hand, this decision was particularly welcomed by low income families, who always struggled to provide their children with a computer of and devices. This ‘arbitrary ban’ was accepted by some because the problem the internet connectivity gave. The hashtag #righttolearn saw tremendous number of tweets between 2pm to 6pm on 20th June 2020. This protest was called ‘arbitrary ban’ against online teaching by government.
The online tweet was not only done by people of Bangalore. They found support from the parents residing in Maharashtra and Madhya Pradesh who are facing the same issue.
Niranjanaradhya VP of National Law School of India University explained the rationale behind the government’s decision. “Our suggestion was not to ban technology completely. There should be some unstructured activities to engage children. These activities are those that the child can do after watching a recoded session. We must ensure children don’t lose interest in learning because of the prolonged holidays. This may lead to issues like dropouts in rural areas. Videos can just be 10 minutes long.” he said. He further added that, “If we prepare broad guidelines, then we will have more clarity about using technology during this unprecedented crisis to engage children.”
The fact is that there is much to be desired in the way edtech has evolved so far and the inclusion issue is also a big one that needs to be taken into consideration. Further, we also need stakeholders who can put proper checks and measures in place to ensure that over exposure does not happen.
