Why Indian Education cannot go online completely?

"Lockdown is Disrupting a Generation's Education"

By- Pratyush Kumar Shekhar      Email Id- shekharofficial311@gmail.com

 

Every child in India wishes at some point that their schools get shut for the foreseeable future and they get to languish at home. Another wish that closely follows is that exams get delayed, or better yet, canceled.

With the coronavirus wreaking havoc across the world, these two express wishes of students have, in fact, come true. But not in the best of circumstances. Schools and colleges were among the first institutions to be shut when the pandemic was announced, even in India. However, these holidays are not as blissful as students thought they would be.

Most schools have been shut since Mid-March to stop the spread of COVID-19. School and higher educational institutions have been shut down in several countries affected by Covid-19 to curb the spread of the infection. According to the UNESCO report, this has impacted more than 157 crore students across 191 countries.

 The traditional face-to-face mode of classroom learning is not feasible for more months. No one knows when schools, colleges, and universities will reopen. Many schools/colleges have started online classes on apps, Youtube, or dedicated platforms. Similarly, many government schools went online like in West Bengal, virtual classes were announced for classes 9 to 12. Teachers and school administrators have been advised to continue communication with students through virtual lectures or portals like Massive Open Online Courses. However, in the absence of physical classrooms and proper digital infrastructure, both teachers and students are facing unprecedented challenges.

The Digital Divide:-

The major challenge of remote learning is a disparity in access – from electricity and internet connections to devices like computers or smartphones.

Access to electricity is crucial for digital education, both for powering devices as well as for connecting to the internet. While the government’s Saubhagya scheme to provide electricity to households shows that almost 99.9% of homes India has a power connection, the picture is less luminous if we look at the quality of electricity and the number of hours for which it is available every day.

Mission Antyodaya, a nationwide survey of villages conducted by the Ministry of Rural Development in 2017-’18, showed that 16% of India’s households received one to eight hours of electricity daily, 33% received 9-12 hours, and only 47% received more than 12 hours a day.

While a computer would be preferable for online classes, a smartphone could also serve the purpose. However, the phone might be convenient for apps, but not for carrying out lengthy assignments or research. While 24% of Indians own a smartphone, only 11% of households possess any type of computer, which could include desktop computers, laptops, notebooks, netbooks, palmtops, or tablets.

Only 8% of all households with members aged between five and 24 have both a computer and an internet connection. It is also useful to note that as per the National Sample Survey definition, a household with a device or internet facility does not necessarily imply that the connection and devices are owned by the household.

A report by Quacquarelli Symonds on the usage of the internet in India reveals that both the state and the private players have not yet accomplished assured connectivity to all subscribers. The survey shows that among respondents who use home broadband, over 3% face cable cuts, 53% face poor connectivity, and 32% face signal issues. In the case of mobile data, 40.2% face poor connectivity, and 56.6% face signal issues.

Sometimes, the lack of connectivity is not a technical glitch. In Jammu and Kashmir, for instance, students could not access online classes because a government order restricted network connectivity to 2G instead of 4G.

There are challenges for teachers too. Not only are many of them digitally inept, but a large number of teachers also have never used an online environment to teach. Teaching a course online course ideally requires preparation, such as designing a lesson plan and preparing teaching materials such as audio and video contents. This has posed new challenges for many teachers.

Students have had to make far bigger adjustments as learning has always been in classrooms which they can’t go to now. Besides many of them may not be that well equipped with technology tools to avail of remote learning. Here the Digital India vision of the government is emerging as a vital instrument for solving the present crisis due to Covid-19.

The lockdown has accelerated the adoption of digital technology. Business houses, educational institutes, analytics, computer, data management methods, and online education solutions have been forced to work in tandem and improve in quality and delivery time to handle such situations.

Pedagogy in digital education is an important link between course content, educationists, technology, and course-takers. The democratization of technology is now an important issue, comprising internet connectivity, telecom infrastructure, affordability of online system, availability of laptop/desktop, software, educational tools, online assessment tools, etc. But it is a fact that technology-based education is more transparent and does not make a difference in front vs backbenchers or girls vs boys.

In the country which has the highest number of Internet shutdowns in the world, an online-only system is bound to have some challenges, even amongst the people who can afford broadband connections and laptops. But even beyond that, many parents are skeptical as they see the additional screen time that this requires as a bad thing.

And Indian educational institutions were just not ready for the lockdown.

With school and colleges shut, there was a mad dash to compensate for the lost time by introducing haphazard models of online learning. In most Indian educational institutions, it is actually a miracle to find a working computer and WiFi connection with proper bandwidth. In the midst of such technological deficiency, any sort of online module is bound to fail.

But the online classes began, and are still continuing. However, a similar poorly glued together plan cannot be undertaken for exams. Especially when you can’t trust your WiFi and computer security. While classes are about imparting knowledge, exams, especially in the context of Indian education, are about evaluation and competition. If students have not been taught properly, the question of a formal evaluation should not even arise.

The Covid-19 pandemic has exposed how rooted structural imbalances are between rural and urban, male and female, rich and poor, even in the digital world. With the existing digital divide, expanding online education will push the digital have-nots to the periphery of the education system, thereby increasing inequity in educational outcomes.

"Education Is Not Just About Attaining A Degree"

Education is the most powerful weapon to change the world. What a winsome metaphor indeed! It can never be denied that education is an absolute indivisible aspect of human civilization. Education makes a human mind reach its highest possibilities of usage and thereby implementing its virtues to attain betterment in favor of society. 

Since the childhood of most juveniles, going through the academic years of schooling, college, and further any of the educational institutions, the syllabus demands the encapturing of pieces of knowledge from the wealth of books, in order to attain a handful of degree honor and ultimately getting a sound job. This definitely makes the individuals intellectually efficient and mechanizes the mind to work in a precise direction. This is what an ideal education seems like to society, and most of us. Education is not spending long hours between the books, education includes doing anything that makes you passionate enough to push yourself and you, as an individual, passionate enough to push yourself to the best, with the primary aim of achieving heights in the field. True education makes heights in the field. 

True education makes you follow your heart, whether it is becoming anything that you truly want to be. The true motive of education is serving the people around to the best of your potential. When your education follows the path of your real capabilities, that education makes you a generous being, working for the humanitarian welfare, which fills your life with blossoms of happiness by the stream of blessing that you receive from corners of satisfied hearts. The present scenario is so worst that we can't even imagine. Teachers are in a race to complete the syllabus. Whether the students understand the concepts or not, it doesn't matter. I am not complaining to each and every teacher but the general conception that has been formed in our society. Online classes are just a means of completing the syllabus and have nothing to do with imparting knowledge.