At a time when there was hope in the air, thanks to the Covid-19 vaccines, the second-much fiercer wave of the virus has once again brought a shockwave around the country.
And as a much-needed precautionary measure, Delhi government has announced to close all private and government schools for all classes. Similarly, in UP also classes till 8th standard have been suspended till April 11 and district wise administration is ordering further closure of schools as per the situation.
Indeed, with all this the focus once shifts to the alternative of attending physical school – the famed online classes.
However, now it has been over a year since students started to attend online classes as a temporary measure and now with them becoming a permanent fixture – the things are going for a toss, quite literally.
Many parents have complained of their kids gets addicted to cell-phones, are complaining of headache due to increased screen time, facing problems of distorted sleep cycle and much more.
It is not as if the government hasn’t issued any guidelines for the online classes, but the same is seldom followed in the rat-race of trying to outdo each-other.
In July, last year, the HRD ministry had announced guidelines for online classes by schools and recommended a cap on duration and the number of sessions in a day for students.
In the guideline called “Pragyata”, the Ministry of Human Resource Development (MHRD) has recommended that the duration for online classes for pre-primary students should not be for more than 30 minutes. For classes 1 to 8, the HRD ministry has recommended two online sessions of up to 45 minutes each while for classes to 9 to 12, four sessions of 30-45 minutes duration have been recommended.
While, this all sounded good on papers, schools gradually started to stretch these timings in their bid to complete course and make up for the missed sessions. With kids attending as many as 4-5 hours of online classes – schools, tuitions, co-curricular, etc – the result is most commonly visible in form of mental fatigue and increasing irritability among them.
Elaborating on the problem, Delhi based Ophthalmologist, Harsimranjit Kaur, says, “With so many online solutions available, kids are using less of their analytical and creative skills. Emotionally too, kids seem to be drained these days.”
“Most children are on the borderline online addiction, and it has become a challenge for parents to mana getheir screen time, especially when online access has become the need of the hour. Parents controlling screen time is a major source of conflict between children and parents. Children are prone to taking extreme steps in rage,” notes Dr Preeti Singh, a Gurugram-based consultant psychologist.
Many parents have also witnessed the grades of their children falling since the start of online classes. And there can be various factors behind it. “An individual’s attention span in classroom vs on the digital medium could be very different. Among many studious children, their curiosity takes them to different websites and there is no end to surfing on the internet once you get addicted. This at the end leads to a downfall in academic grade,” says Delhi based counselor Ajeet Maurya.
Even UNICEF has expressed its concern on the issue. “Under the shadow of Covid-19, the lives of millions of children have temporarily shrunk to just their homes and their screens. We must help them navigate this new reality,” the statement quoted UNICEF executive director Henrietta Fore as saying.
It indeed is time to strictly monitor and regulate the upsurge of online classes to save our students from its adverse impacts.
Schools should come out with a new format of education. They can share some practice and exercise sheets as an homework which students complete within the timeliness of 2 -3 days. There should be only 04 hours study on line and rest to be shared as exercise sheets : Sati Kumar, Dancer and choreographer from NOIDA