For a very long time we have pressed pause on education. It’s time we reset learning. The way to realise this is to ensure that all parents send their children to school.
There are too many headlines telling us that education is catastrophically broken because children have got addicted to their screens. How do we fix it? The rhetoric of brokenness and crisis doesn’t help. It prevents dialogue and reflection in favour of quick fixes. Systems have to fall in place, where we can find a variety of methods to equip all learners, privileged, poor, middle class and alternatively abled. A child must always be a priority and not an afterthought.
The stress is not about exams, it is about coming back to school. This has created a challenge both in the minds of parents and children. Primary students from Grade I to VIII are enthused about school return. However, senior students are finding it extremely tedious and not ready to conform to early morning schedules, uniforms, timetables, teacher authority. Perhaps, there is even a sense of insecurity of coming out of a cocoon.
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Examinations are not a threat, in fact, it has been proven that assessment in the last three years whether online or offline has been child-centric, to the point of being unrealistic across levels. What schools have to emphasise is deep personalised learning and bringing children back into the fold.
Redesigning Classrooms for Imaginative Children
We have all inherited a planet but unlike other creatures we create our own learning, we create cities, civilisations, art, music, literature, in other words, the entire world that we inhabit.
The big shift is to look at imagination, the more imaginative children become the more creative they will be. Imagination has been affected during online learning. Parents and teachers need to focus on this new model. We have to really look at the learning commons in a very different manner. Learning should not be subject-driven or examination-driven. We need to focus on a continuum which encapsulates the emotional, social and adversarial quotient.
Fine motor skills have continued to develop as a result of many activities done at home through games, art, puzzles etc. However the concern is slow development of the gross motor skills. Younger children are finding it difficult to do basic movements like walking confidently, climbing playground apparatus with ease, using staircases and a host of other practices that are an integral part of early childhood. Writing, reading and other reflective practices that take concentration and time have also been affected.
Teachers have to work a great deal on concentration and remediation. We have to develop the generosity to share resources, build communities of practice and develop design thinking. This new mutuality will help create a culture of personal engagement among children.
In order to create holistic classroom transaction and lessen learning gaps, we must focus on every child. This envisions integrating knowledge, skills, values, attitudes and transformative competencies into the curriculum – and repurposing education from achievement of ‘academic excellence’ to ‘thriving for life’. Ensuring that our children are adaptable, secure in themselves and resilient when it comes to change and challenges.
Schools need to open their classrooms to all these factors. We need to invest in redesigning of classrooms, keeping a low teacher-child ratio, profiling children independently for an understanding of their learning levels and challenges and setting up tech-based systems to support these concepts in real-time schooling.
An Opportunity to Reset Learning
We continue to talk about parents as independent entities that are not a part of the ecology of the school. We have to create systems where parents, teachers and students take ownership and support each other by giving more freedom. Sharing of resources and tools, shifting from modes of inspection to those of enabling and supporting, so that everyone realises the importance of schooling.
Parents must ensure that their children return to schools of opportunity where play, art, music, sports, theatre, activities and projects bring joy back into learning. Particularly in the foundational, primary, pre-primary and middle years where curriculum should be 80 per cent kinaesthetic.
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When children come back to school, teaching has to be embedded with emotional and social learning, which will create a psychological safety net, increase thinking conversations, encourage expression, diverse opinions and questioning minds. We need to educate children so they can take forward primary values, culture and learning through empathetic and adaptive offline school audits, which have to be done with empathy and care.
We have been given an amazing opportunity to reset learning. No student would like an adult to reimagine his or her future. Educators need to grapple with the present.
Technology has become a new toy for the world, more so as a result of the pandemic. The question is does it create learning or merely simplifies or amplifies our capacities. The best that we can do is to redesign our own lives and create space for our children. In order to enhance the economies of the 21st century, we need to dive into the gene pools of learning of our identities and communities so that we can square the circle.
Dr Ameeta Mulla Wattal is Chairperson and Executive Director, Education, Innovations and Training at DLF Foundation Schools and Scholarship Programmes. The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the stand of this publication.
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