The Covid-19 pandemic is here to stay. Until a vaccine and a definite medical solution are found, the threat of the illness and its disastrous consequences loom over us. We have changed the way we live—no more socialising, no more movie theatres, no more … anything! The biggest change has come in the field of education—schools and colleges. The classroom has shifted to the house and to online teaching. The pandemic has resulted in schools shut all across the world with over 1.2 billion children out of the classroom globally.
This has resulted in a dramatic change in education whereby teaching is undertaken remotely on digital platforms, enabling the teacher to work out of home like an IT executive. Slowly, teachers and students are getting used to this new form of education: from video conferencing tools to the humble smartphone, technology has taken over education and it is here to stay.
A few misguided people including some politicians are demanding an end to online education. As one running several academic institutions—free, aided, matriculation and ISC schools—I know that most parents want online teaching. One couple came saying that they didn’t want their child to spend half a day on the computer. “So what does he do all day?” we asked. “Watch TV,” was the answer.
We had to convince them that both were equally harmful or good and at least with the computer, he learned something. Some parents do not want to pay fees, but want teachers to be paid. How is that possible? I am also a grandmother supervising my grandson’s online learning. The children have no problem. They are happy to see each other online and look forward to their classes. The success of online learning depends on the teacher, just as the success of classroom teaching depends on the teacher. This has been a wonderful time for teachers to be creative and innovative. They sing, dance, draw and paint and do all the things children enjoy. Some schools train their teachers, while many are finding mentors in Chennai’s vast IT industry.
A valid question is, what about the village schoolchild? Will digital education result in educational inequality? Few people realise that Tamil Nadu is a welfare state in the field of education. Since J Jayalalithaa’s time in 2011, the Government of Tamil Nadu has been distributing free laptops (also bicycles and bags, uniforms and books) to students studying in government and government-aided schools and colleges in the state, to help them acquire computing skills and access the internet.
Every year, the Tamil Nadu government distributes laptops free of cost to between 5 and 8 lakh students. So far, at least 37.88 lakh students have received laptops. While TN distributes free laptops, Ladakh is distributing solar-powered educational tablets. Why can’t other regions do the same? But there is still a digital divide for younger children. Village children studying with smartphones are happy receiving worksheets and talking to their teachers.
For those with no access to smartphones, the solution is television. Every village has TV connectivity and some village houses have TV sets. If not, there is a common TV set in the village. Governments can commandeer channels during the day and beam lessons to primary and middle school children. Doordarshan reaches the unreachable parts of the state. Many years ago, I sat in the government guest house at Mudumalai National Park, watching DD News as wild elephants trumpeted outside. The Tamil Nadu government has commandeered five channels and Kalvi (education) channel is dedicated to teaching. Children, unattended by elders, may “bunk” online classes.
Village communities must make the effort to designate one person to ensure that children attend online classes. Even urban children in the best schools would bunk class if they could. Digital education at home requires domestic supervision. This is the new norm. It is worth recalling the SITE project. Satellite Instructional Television Experiment or SITE was an experimental satellite communications project launched by Vikram Sarabhai, designed jointly by NASA and ISRO. The project beamed educational programmes by TV to rural India from 1 August 1975 to 31 July 1976, covering over 2,400 villages in 20 districts of Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Karnataka, Madhya Pradesh, Orissa and Rajasthan.
The primary objective was to educate people on issues related to family planning, agriculture and national integration. The secondary objective was to impart school and adult education, train teachers, and improve occupational skills and general health and hygiene. While the goal was to educate the financially backward and academically illiterate, the project helped India gain technical experience in the field of satellite communication. As one of the aims of the experiment was to study the potential of TV as a medium of development, the villages were chosen specifically for their backwardness.
All India Radio was given the responsibility of programme generation. The SITE programme had a strong impact in the selected villages and showed that India could make use of technology to fulfil the socio-economic needs of the country. To quote Arthur C Clarke, it was “the greatest communication experiment in history”. This led to an increased focus on satellite broadcasting in India. In September 2004, India launched EDUSAT, the first satellite in the world built exclusively to serve education in India, especially interactive satellite-based distance education.
India has the technical expertise and experience of successfully carrying out education via electronic media. More states should convert to digital education. By refusing to adapt to the new norm of distance education and denying children the right to education, we will not create an equal society. We will merely create an illiterate and uneducated society. Fortunately, several High Courts have sensibly permitted online teaching and the Hon’ble Supreme Court has not stayed the orders.
(The author runs eight schools, including an ISC school and three free schools, a centre for children with learning disabilities, autism and dyslexia, and a women’s college, in Chennai, Kanchipuram and Kumbakonam)
Nanditha Krishna
Historian and environmentalist. She also runs many schools and a college