Online education fails to achieve desired result
Zainab
Education is the tool of strong. The strong people do not need to have the muscles of iron and steel. However, the roughness of mind is a blessed gift for them. Keeping this thing in mind, Jammu and Kashmir is not lagging behind. It, knowing the fact very well, has tread on the path of learning. Apart from other things, it includes online classes. It has many advantages as well as disadvantages. However, the disadvantages foreshadow the advantages. Let us discuss briefly about this in the following lines.
First is emotional void. A classroom with human beings is full of emotions that leave a long-lasting impact on the psyche of students. Their personalities are molded. They learn new things from their teachers and other fellow students.
Love, hatred, sympathy, empathy, care, envy, anger, depression, anxiety, courage, etc., are learnt. However, in case of online classes, these things are taught in such a manner that the distance between the teacher and the taught is so vast and wide that it becomes quite difficult to understand anything; other than nodding their heads in consent.
Well, it is not the fault of students because they have to get marks of internal assignments in all five subjects. At the end of the day, it all goes to same abyss, without any concrete result.
Second is network failure. As we all know that Internet is the network of networks that can fail at any time. Sometimes the server does not work while sometimes the router fails. In this way, attention is diverted or distracted quite often. A student loses the rhythm of studying that is the key for learning. In other words, when connection is snapped and reconnected, in the meantime, all the good work is wasted for nothing.
Third is lack of knowledge of modern science and technology in general and the associated things with online classes in particular. Sometimes students don’t know how to connect with the online classes while sometimes the teachers falter in the process. In this way, the grand edifice of education comes tumbling like a pack of cards. Echo is the recurrent thing whenever students take online classes. This mars the learning process.
Fourth and last is that every student cannot afford a smart phone. Some families fail to live from hand to mouth while some are efficient. The former lag behind and fall in the depths of frustration and depression.
Seeing their fellow classmates taking online classes at their ease, they cannot understand what is wrong with their destinies. They become a burden for their parents by constantly forcing them to bring smart phones for them. In this way, the education that had come to shape a person destroys them without the fault of the students.
The need of the hour is to have some other innovative way of teaching where minimum digital divide is present. In the present world, omnipresent Internet is still a dream for many. They cannot think of luxuries like smart phones.
At this point of time, I am reminded of a poem “An Elementary School Classroom in a Slum” where the poet says that the slum dwelling children have no future because they don’t have facilities to fulfill their dreams. So, let us, who have luxury for fulfilling our dreams, help others in this endeavor. Overall, online classes have brought a lot of miseries in disguise.
(The author is a student at the Army Goodwill School, Hanjik Hajibagh)
