CHENNAI: Ashish hides behind the solid red curtain in his living room and screams, “I am not home, Daddy! I have gone to office.” The four-year-old has had his breakfast, showered and is dressed up. He knows it’s time for his online classes.
As schools across the State have been shut since last March, online classes have become the alternative for most students. While the technological leap has been manageable for older children with proper access to technology, parents of toddlers describe online classes as “impossible”. However, the fear of being left out or falling back has kept their children enrolled in schools where learning is sparse or comes with a lot of difficulty.
Five feet away from Ashish, his father, Kumar, has opened Google Meet on his laptop and waits for Ashish’s teacher to permit him into the class. “Ashish, if you come here and join me, daddy will give you a kaju katli,” he promises. The toddler sidles out from behind the curtain as Kumar reaches out to him. The kid laughs and screams as he dashes across the living room into the bedroom, where he sits to play with his dinosaur toys. “Ashish, we can’t see you,” his teacher says on the computer in a kind voice looking into an empty house.
This is a typical morning in Kumar’s house. His wife, a Spanish teacher, takes online classes from 9 am to 1 pm, leaving Ashish’s classes in the father’s hands. This has been the case for more than six months. “I work for a UK-based bank, so my day starts around 12. This means feeding, playing and chilling with him is my wife’s job and I have the tougher task of making him sit in front of a computer for online classes,” Kumar tells Express.
Samyuktha has a five-year-old daughter who she claims is an activity-based learner. “My techie husband has meetings in the morning. Not only do I have to get my daughter to sit for online classes, but I have to do it silently so we do not disturb my husband,” she says. She added her daughter, who “likes getting her hands dirty to learn”, barely learns from online classes when her peers seem to be doing much better.
“For example, they have name-and-tell, where the teacher waves an object on screen and students have to say what it is. I’m sure my daughter would be able to name the objects if she saw the screen,” rues Samyuktha. She adds that most good schools in the city admit students into Class 1 only if they have completed kindergarten, leaving many parents with no other option.
However, Ramya, a former Montessori teacher, has decided not to risk enrolling her four-year-old son after finding that online classes were not working for him. “I have some time in hand and we have a couple of old neighbours who like spending time with him. So I did not enrol him for online kindergarten,” she says. Ramya adds that her son’s school demanded a whopping Rs 60,000 a year for four-to-five online classes a week. “My neighbour teaches him songs and games.
I teach him the alphabet, colours and numbers. He imitates everything my husband and I do anyway, and I think he’s learning enough for his age,” she said. However, she has not thought about Class 1 admissions yet. “Many schools have an entrance exam or an interview. I’m sure my son will crack it,” she said. Nithya, the mother of a five-year-old girl, said her daughter’s school simply sends videos and exercises through a group chat. Her daughter studies at a CBSE school in Chromepet. “I have to record videos of my daughter reciting rhymes or writing the alphabet and send them to teachers. I do all the teaching. I have no idea why I pay the school,” she complains.
While parents who have access to technology struggle to make their kids participate, many others have simply skipped classes. However, unless parents have the time to spare, it is a bad idea to pull children out of school, says Dr Debmitta Dutta, a parenting consultant who founded whatparentsask.com. “When parents are busy with work, it’s unlikely they will learn things on their own. Some input towards focussed learning is essential to ensure children don’t fall behind,” she says.