MILLIONS OF CHILDREN ARE OUT OF SCHOOL. LOSING CRUCIAL TIME OF LEARNING

MONOJ GOGOI

         Children are busy in doing home works

        Today we are going to discuss what our children are doing during this ongoing lockdown.  Do you notice their activities? Childhood is the most important period of learning for human being. You all know the children and teenagers have innate quality to learn anything whether it may be language or languages, calculation, arithmetic, playing childhood games, sports, dreaming future, ethics etc etc. if we see now they are out of school a long period of time and uncertainty is looming when formal education can be restarted.

        On June 16, 2020, THE TIME, one of the world’s most reputed newspapers, published from Britain, carried a front page story “Millions of pupils doing no work”. In the news it was told, based on a study conducted by University College London (UCL) a fifth of the country’s ten million primary school children had done no work at home or less than an hour a day. Similarly another academic study revealed that about four million pupils had not been irregular contact with their teachers, and assignment set for them had not been returned up to six million children. It is a “potential threat to educational development of a generation of children,” – Francis Green, the lead academic of the UCL study. Another study conducted by the National Foundation for Educational Research contacted more than 3000 heads and teachers in England last month and found in an average they could kept touch with just 60 percent of their children. This study explored more on the students’ inactivity at home. In a separate study by the University College of London (UCL)’s Institute of Education, covering whole Britain showed that children had spent a daily average of 2.5 hours studying. Excluding long narratives and some of the most important points, here just few selective points of these vast studies of highly reputed institutions were stated.

On the same day, THE GUARDIAN, another internationally renowned newspaper also published a new with headline “Four in 10 pupils had little contact with teachers during lockdown”. The news report had also a subtitle “Two separate studies raise fears that millions of children, particularly in state schools, have done almost no work at all”. This news report also stated the same findings of the University College London and the National Foundation for Educational Research.

A young boy who appeared HSLC this year teaching children in a village Naamghar in a remote village in upper Assam (For more please go to the description of the video)

But the point is here, all the school going students in India have been out of schools due to the lockdown imposed on March to break the transmission chain of the novel corona virus. For how long the schools will remain close it is uncertain. Although we don’t have any formal data-based study in India, we all know that except few nominal children, almost all are doing nothing at home.

When I visited few pupils, parents and guardians  in rural Assam and contacted some others  in other parts of India through telephonic conversations I got some dreadful findings. Pupils of lower primary schools are almost doing nothing, just a handful of students are forcefully engaged hardly for an hour in studies and study related activities. On the other hand , upper primary and secondary levels’ students whether they are government run schools or private schools had no touch with their teachers, no home assignments too. Contrary to this, they demanded smart phones urging it would be helpful in learning by browsing websites and YouTube videos. Yes – it may be helpful in catching up the missed classes if the phones were used in right ways.  Video gaming for hours!! –it is abysmal. Indian students are more prone to the games called- Free Fire and PUBG. Excessive use of their tiny growing up brains in virtual wars, anxiety and excitement for winning or killing enemies in sadistic ways with his own tricks, gun and other ammunition; depression in  losing the game or money in it may have callous effects on teenage school goers brains.  The impact of long time spending on playing these games severally affect the neuropathy of children. Billions neurons and other chemicals in the brain starts to work differently. Psychologists and Neuropsychiatrists better known to  the larger impacts of it.  An Assam Medical College Hospital (AMCH) professor Dr Dhrubajyoti Bhuyan, neuropsychiatrist, and his team have been doing a commendable jobs in creating awareness on mental health related issues in upper Assam of India.

The academic period which our students have lost and going to be loss for an uncertain period of time is not reversible. How the students can cope up with this situation. How we can reduce the loss of this crucial time of learning, we need to work in it. The academicians and policy-makers should think about the matter  and prepare policies for it.