Namrata Sharma

With the rapid increase in virtual conferences, life has become easier to communicate with the world just by staying at home. In fact, it has also become hectic by virtually participating and travelling all over the nation and the world, while staying at home. Since the first lockdown was imposed people globally have been doing their business via the net.
Knowingly or unknowingly, I have become a part of this work-from-home force. I have taught a semester course on social entrepreneurship and am now teaching a course on development media and another course on life skills. These activities have become a pleasant way of interacting with people, especially the youth during the otherwise isolation from the normal world activities. Teaching these courses online has their own challenges. For example, as soon as a teacher asks a student a question, suddenly their net gets disturbed and either they cannot hear or they have to cut off for a while. How does a teacher manage this? It could be genuine, but what if it is not? Also this whole gambit of giving exams while staying home has raised a lot of questions on the relevance of exams for the future.
Virtual reality has become a life-saver during this pandemic. But it has also raised a lot of questions related to how things were done before and what can be done in the future, especially in relation to education system. According to UNESCO, the COVID 19 pandemic has affected almost 1.6 billon learners in more than 190 countries in all continents. It estimates that 94 per cent students across the world, up to 99 per cent in low and lower-middle-income countries, have been impacted due to closures of schools and other educational spaces. There are several reports now coming that children, mainly girl children, of low income households are at the risk group category of having to drop out of school and probably never return back to formal education.

Online learning
On the other hand, as the pandemic has progressed and evidences are coming up some important positive impacts of the virtual education system are also surfacing. According to the World Economic Forum, for those who have access to the right technology, there is evidence that learning online can be more effective. Some researches show, on average, students retain 25-60 per cent more when learning online compared to 8-10 per cent in classrooms. The same report mentions that e-learning requires 40-60 per cent less time to learn than in a traditional classroom setting. During e-learning, students can learn at their own pace by re-reading by going back to previous teachings and skipping things they are not interested in and accelerating things they want to learn more about. This engages the students more.
However, it is also understood that this varies among age groups of the students. Younger students require more infrastructure and atmosphere for their learning and this might not be possible at home of many children, especially those at low and middle income households in underdeveloped and developing countries. During the pandemic, there was a short period when the schools and colleges reopened. For me, it was a pleasant relief to go to classrooms and interact with students and get them to do exercises and educational activities physically. For some students, it was likewise. However, there were many students who said they preferred education from home as it saved travel time to school. Also they seemed to start liking the freedom of self-education and learning more by themselves.
Frankly speaking, if one reviews the education before the pandemic, there were several assumptions that the education system was moving towards failure. According to UNICEF, even before the pandemic, more than 72 million children of primary education were out of school and 750 million adults were illiterate and were not taught skills to improve their and their children’s living conditions. Therefore, even before the pandemic, many children who should be in schools were left out and adults who needed education were sidelined. In many countries like Nepal, students who were in school also often lacked the support system and infrastructure to help them in learning.
The World Economic Forum states that education system was in a crisis even before the pandemic as it is built on the Industrial Revolution model focusing on Intelligence Quotient (IQ) with emphasis on memorisation and standardisation. It says that there has to be a way of updating the education system with job readiness and ability to compete against smart machines and creation of long-term economic value in mind. It also mentions that education with access, equity and quality must be improved to solve the global education crisis.

Sustained happiness
The education system has mostly been geared towards keeping economic values in mind. However, with the advent of the pandemic and the several interactions with large groups of youth virtually, I have been thinking that while the revision of the educational system happens, the goal should be shifted from only gearing towards economic output to a long-term sustained happiness. Ultimately, if a human being is happy they become more effective and efficient. This will lead them towards becoming more productive and pleasant. As a result, the world will also be a happier and more sustainable place.
Aggressive economic growth has actually led towards erosion of the world natural resources, the environment and above all, peace of mind of individuals who get driven to accumulate wealth that cannot be used in several lifetimes. Virtual education is here to stay, any revision in the education system needs to acknowledge this and focus in physical and spiritual growth so people can cope with any disaster that may befall their lifetime. The revised education system requires a holistic approach to wealth creation that benefits not only the individual but the society in general.

(Namrata Sharma is a senior journalist and women rights advocate. namrata1964@yahoo.comTwitter handle: NamrataSharmaP)