How Are Indian Schools Coping With Online Classes? We Ask The Experts

0:00 Mute Karo, Mute Karo. I said, excuse me. If these children were in your classroom, how would you have muted them? You are the same teacher. If they are all talking together, it's perfect. That's the symphony that you want. The kind of attachment love questioning that we want the schools to be doing at this point in time. How I house the ECA or a larger body or you know, know all the association teachers ensuring that it's doing good and not harm.

0:35 So this is where exactly the difference between appropriate online or virtual education and inappropriate comes into the picture. I still see a lot of listeners commenting three hours of online. I would say leave those schools right now. If they are giving your little child three hours of online, that is not good. ECA has also advocated 60 minutes, 60 minutes of video chats. Now a lot of parents tell me that I have to sit with my child in the beginning.

1:08 And I tell those parents, even if you had put this child in preschool, you would have to go during the settling period. Anything new, you will have to be with your child till your child settles. We've taught teachers don't focus on mute and unmute because most of the teachers went into online with focusing on that mute and unmute button. I feel like ripping it out of their screens, you know, because the mute karo, mute Karo. I said, excuse me.

1:36 If these children were in your classroom, how would you have muted them? You are the same teacher. If they are all talking together, it's perfect. That's the symphony that you want. That's called the symphony of learning with communication. So you have to train the teachers to understand what to focus on and what not to focus on. If you go on my Facebook page, you will see pictures of states where online is still allowed. You see teachers who are at home now using home available items to make puppets to communicate to those children.

2:12 We ask them to tell stories with riddles, you know, so that the child gets an opportunity to talk. I think the most important thing that teachers have forgotten is that those little squares that you see on the screen, they are still those bubbly cherubic children who were in your classroom. So please think of yourself as the same teacher. Don't worry about your looks, don't worry about your nails, and don't worry about how your voice is sounding.

2:41 As long as that those little squares in front of you are smiling and are giving you an answer. Sometimes giving you an answer before you ask the question. Also, that's perfectly fine. It means education is going on. And Mansi, before I give away to everybody else, I want to read something which I wish the government had read in their own country's national education policy. I want to read these two sentences out for you. It says the narrow time lag between the generation of new knowledge and its application, especially in the fields of science and technology, necessitate the periodic renewal of school and higher education curricula to maintain their relevance to the changing societal and personal needs of children.

3:32 This is part of our national education policy and it ends by saying, in a nutshell, educational opportunity requires an effective system to support learning, including supportive organizations, resources and sound policies. I wish the governments had read this in the national education policy. It is talking about actually this time, where we have to learn to use technology to ensure that education is ongoing.

4:05 Some schools may have done that. All the educationists have told you, be in touch with your school. Give them a feedback. Even they don't know they were not conversant with Corona before. You need to give them a feedback. What's working in your socioeconomic status? What's not working? Whether the kids are able to afford. There may be families which have only one kid and four iPads in the house. And there may be unfortunate and many, many 90% families which which don't have a single iPad and four kids.

4:32 How do you work around this? There is no one answer to it and government cannot take only a blanket decision. I think that the ban has unfortunately stopped innovation. Things had to improve. You had to give a feedback as parents. You could talk about the fees, you could negotiate about it. You could negotiate. Even the teachers need to be paid. Schools as an infrastructure, all of us have got a cut in our salaries. Yes, so we made.

4:56 But at the end of the day, remember one thing is the teachers, the infrastructure of the school that has a huge part in your child's development. Social development, physical development, and of course academic development. And we can't do away with it. They'll take it away.

5:14 So you're saying something.

5:16 I also wanted to say that a lot of our feedback, when there were schools that were online a little earlier, like Martin, they went that journey of virtual engagement. What we recognized is a lot of parents were actually not focused on what their school was doing. They were looking at what the other school was doing. So I've had what screen sent to me saying, I'm not aiming the school, I'll get it. That school is doing it for seven hours.

5:43 Ours is only doing it for four. Just fight with the management. Why are we not doing it for seven hours after that school that was doing it for seven hours.

5:52 Revolted.

5:52 The other one saying, oh, we were better off. Yeah, for us, it was confusion. But this constant comparison, you know, the assumption is someone has it better than we do. I think it's about time we just recognize Ek school. Hair. Egg Ghar hair. Let's focus. Let's not get into it. You know what? Look at Insta and enjoy someone's sky. I just told Swati, ma', am, post those beautiful pictures of the sky. Let's. Let's not put it out of context, because I think parents, y' all are doing a lot of that, and that is causing a lot of anxiety to us as the parent community.