Covid classes & learning losses

Ever since Covid appeared human response has been varied, knee-jerking and intermittent. Imparting education has seen a paradigm shift. From the traditional teacher-taught mode it metamorphosed into a virtual mode. While it was a desperate option there can be no two views about learning loss due to Covid induced mode of imparting education. The negative impact of Covid time is felt more severely on primary level schoolchildren. At an age when they are required to mingle with children, share their joys and anxieties, learn to wait for gratification and learn to take success and failure in their stride, they find themselves isolated from the social ecosystem. There is a lack of opportunities for developing behavioural traits and social stimuli during impressionable years. Children exposed to the virtual world for a longer time are likely to lose touch with physical reality and their learning becomes predominantly verbal and ideational.

Since they are confined to home, they lose opportunities to experiment and obtain results. Learning becomes mental gymnastics with no appreciation of physical reality. Above all, lack of peer interaction deprives them of learning essential social traits of accommodation, agreement and assimilation. In sum, prolonged virtual learning in isolation of one's home hits at the very roots of socialization and personality development.

Besides psycho-social implications prolonged virtual learning intensifies the digital divide and one's inability to earn livelihood in later years. Despite the claims and efforts of the government, internet penetration remains an issue. Studies must be undertaken to measure discontinuation of education by the less fortunate and the likely impact it will have on society. The wait to reopen educational institutions is over. Parents of primary school-going children do not seem to favour the idea of sending their children to school anytime soon unless there is certainty about vaccination and its efficacy. On the contrary, it would appear that there is no sharp division of opinion on the issue of holding physical classes for higher classes. It is indeed intriguing that if one could go to cinema without risking Covid how going to school or college can be. In taking the decision to re-open schools and to reassure parents about the safety of children it is imperative for the government to ensure that the potential sources of contracting Covid are eliminated. Among other things the new protocol may include vaccination (of all teachers & staff), wearing masks and using sanitizers compulsory. The need and desirability of tweaking class size and layout should also be explored. Covid pandemic is a crisis and a challenge. It calls for a multi-pronged approach and an ingenious human response.

(The writer is Psychologist & Wellness Consultant)