Everything is serious, and its not helping
Sarthak Roy, a 14 year old boy who studies in Class X at a high-income private school in Gurugram (Haryana) shares his views on online education.
A multi-faceted teenager involved in school drama club and passionate about drums and singing, Sarthak loves his dog Blackie and wants to start an NGO (part-time, he ensures to add) when he grows older. Amidst the pandemic, he misses interacting with his friends and playing (pitthu, football, cricket, relay races etc) with them during the various breaks that physical school provided.
“I like(d) that we could go to PE and run in the lunchbreak, sit with each other.”
Since his school closed due to COVID-19, Sarthak has been attending online classes for over 4 months now and is forthcoming in stating his preference for physical classes. He also believes that online classes make students lazy and affect their health.
“We get into the habit of sitting down in front of the screen and doing nothing for straight 6 hours.”
He explains …
Q. What do you mean by doing nothing?
A. In the class also you sit but interact more and doubts get clearer. People are shy to unmute and switch on cameras. So we can’t see each other and it feels like looking at a black screen. Only the teacher presents his or her screen and talks. Obviously, if you have to do some work, some exercise, then you do that but its like you can’t interact a lot and it makes you feel lonely stuff.
He explains that turning off or on videos during an online class works like dominos as students do not want to attract attention to themselves by being the only ones visible. This unease with scrutiny and preference for privacy is only human, especially amongst adolescents who are undergoing physical changes and are generally self-conscious of their appearance and seek peer validation.
Disengaged, Sarthak admitted to listening to music during classes in the initial weeks and equated this phenomenon (quite common amongst students these days) to bunking. While students have found ways to utilize this new medium of existence to their advantage, teachers still largely prefer a didactic approach, completely missing the opportunity for personalized, collaborative and constructivist learning pedagogies that education technology provides.
Akin to physical classes, teachers continue to disallow interactions amongst students in online classes, without accounting for the lost social time and addressing the socio-emotional loss students are experiencing. Even in the breakout rooms recently introduced*, Sarthak noted that students did not talk since everyone thinks of the (in-class) activity as serious, which seems to have become synonymous with school.
Q. What do you miss about actual school?
A. In school, there were events in which I could participate. Like assembly and all. But now nothing is interesting and it is also boring to look at the screen. Interaction with both (students and teachers) because we (used to) talk to our friends in between and we do fun stuff and with the teacher also, we have fun stuff, like we laugh together and .. but here, its very serious and just have to study and look at the laptop or phone.
(In school) In the breaktime we could go to our cab friends, the bus friends and some of the friends in my society are in my school, I can go to them. We eat lunch together, snacks together. We share food so that’s a good feeling actually.
These days Sarthak shares breakfast with his family (mother) and amidst the chaos, he appreciates the extra time that the pandemic has afforded them, now that she works from home as well. In the pros-list for online classes, he notes that teacher remarks (his words: scolding) are less detrimental to students in this medium. He also appreciates that the school has continued to offer drama club online and looks forward to these classes.
In this club teachers and elected student group leaders conduct presentations and various activities like dumb charades, improvisation, accent trials for a much smaller group of 15 interested students as compared to 32 in his curricular classes. His suggestions for teachers echo his experiences in this class.
“In the drama club, you have to keep your camera on. You cannot be shy, because that’s the purpose of a drama club that you go on a stage and perform.”
Q. What do you want your teachers to do right now or whenever school reopens?
A. I want them to interact more and let the students also interact with each other, because it gets quite boring if you don’t interact with anyone and just study all the time. Also the teacher should suggest, as in, organize games may be, small games of 5–10 mins, may be at the starting of every class, or maybe once a week. She or he can may be pick up a brain teaser which would be a lot of fun for the kids.
The absence of such simple initiatives by teachers to engage students and address their socio-emotional needs along with the lack of contextualization of learning in a high-income, highly coveted school in Gurugram is astonishing. Sarthak shared that no one from his school has ever spoken to the students about Covid! He gets his information from watching live news on Youtube and gaming websites as well as from conversations with his mother.
Q. What do you think about what is going on in the world right now?
A. Ya, its, I don’t know. Its like, very strange, all of it happened so suddenly. Its been long now. Since the start many people have been putting the blame on China and there is actually a little bit proof that the pandemic started from China and then it has spread in the whole world. While China’s cases have decreased, ours have increased, and so the question is how is this happening. And if the answer is any antidote or heal, why haven’t they shared it with us? Also you know that China attacked India recently.
This interview highlights the suboptimal nature of online learning and the potential risks to student well-being by assuming equivalence between online classes and school education. Schools are not only responsible for imparting knowledge and cognitive skills, but also for facilitating holistic growth including social and physical development. Now that our moments of first response panic has passed, this recognition is essential for creating products, services and attitudes that empower young humans to navigate these dynamic and challenging times.
*The school has recently shifted from google to zoom, and this is based on only 2–3 days of observations by Sarthak.
Please note that appropriate consent was documented and the interview was conducted on zoom as part of an interview series with students in classes IX-XII about their experiences with online education and the pandemic. To receive updates about these interview blogs and analyses, please subscribe to CovEd Conversations.
