“We’re forgetting about the kids again, especially those living in the rural pockets”

We have seen this happen during the previous cases of natural disasters and situations of unrest that when education is not given a priority, a year down the line you are left facing an uphill battle

Nagakarthik Mp
| Updated: Last updated on May 21st, 2020,

In response to the COVID19 situation in India, we have the governments, both at the state and central level, NGOs and civilians scrambling to make sure that immediate relief is available to those in need, and rightly so.

They are making sure that communities like daily wage labourers, the poor, sex-workers, farmers have what they need to survive on a daily basis, which includes money, water, food, shelter and sanitation facilities.

Amid all of this, we seem to have forgotten that the first institutions that closed were the schools. Before the flight ban, the lockdown and the curfews, it was the schools that shut down across India. In most relief-focused efforts, education, in this scenario, seems to be pretty low down in the priority list.

This isn’t something new, we have seen this happen during previous cases of natural disasters and situations of unrest that when education is not given priority, and a year down the line you are left facing an uphill battle. This holds true, especially in rural scenarios, where schools being shut for a long duration, combined with economic stress could result in students dropping out of school, parents resorting to pulling children out of school in order to put them to work and learning levels in students dropping to a large extent making it harder for them to cope up in classes once the schools reopen.

In most relief-focused efforts, education, in this scenario, seems to be pretty low down in the priority list. Photo: Pixabay

In most cases, the easiest option has been to send out directives for students to start enrolling on e-learning platforms, for schools to start video lessons and get on the virtual learning bandwagon. While this definitely seems like an avenue to address the situation, it is marred with obstacles.

The first being, virtual learning has NOT taken off anywhere in the world, especially not in low-resource settings like India. Let’s face it, it isn’t like our in-class physical teaching methods are so great that it’s desirable for children to do this voluntarily through a screen.

Secondly, there are huge infrastructural and systemic challenges. Teachers are not exposed to using technology for educational purposes. Sending a couple of lessons over WhatsApp is cool, but it is not an effective method of teaching. We then have the infrastructure aspect of it where having access to a smartphone and data is not an everyday reality for most of the children in India.

While these are real challenges, they are extremely complex ones and ones that do not have a straight forward solution to them. In most cases, it is true that these technological solutions are not applicable for the majority of students in the country because they were not the target audience during the designing process. The solutions are designed to cater to high-resource scenarios and are marketed to work in low-resource scenarios which, in most cases, never pans out.

In rural pockets of India, there are huge infrastructural and systemic challenges. Teachers are not exposed to using technology for educational purposes. Photo: Pixabay

Is there a way then that education can be addressed during times like these? We believe that the answer is a resounding yes. We believe that it involves people, technology and a lot of play. If we were to re-look at education and move from the classroom and marks setting to what it is actually meant for — learning — there could be ways in which we could address it during this time of distress and lockdown and still come out of it keeping kids engaged during this process.

What does this involve? Games, books and a whole lot of fun. Kids in low-resource settings do not have enough access to learning materials outside of the school ecosystem and in times like these when the school ecosystem is at a standstill, these learning materials could play a huge role in keeping these kids engaged.

What if we considered an education relief package for the kids in such scenarios? What would that entail? A learning kit, that is delivered to the kids along with the relief material to the parents. A kit that contains a set of books both Hindi/English and in local dialects, a set of puzzles and games to keep the kids engaged, some DIY kits like Lego or Mechanics and a space at the cluster or community level where a resource person can engage with them a few times a week where technology can be used to improve upon the books and games, maybe a few movies screened every week! No boring classroom lessons, but peer learning, involving games and puzzles.

Kids in low-resource settings do not have enough access to learning materials outside of the school ecosystem. Photo: Pixabay

These community sessions once or twice a week can also act as great points for delivering nutrition and disseminating best practices and social distancing practices. The resource persons in these community centers can be trained to use technology to interact with NGOs and the government to plan what the sessions look like.

So, if there are dry ration kits being put together to last families for these few months, can we also maybe look at education kits that cost say about Rs 1,500 per child to help them get access to these resources and this ecosystem?

Do you think that this is an effective way to reaching out to kids during times like these and letting them know that you are not being forgotten and that we are designing this with your actual reality in mind? We understand that there is a resource gap and we are going to actively work to fill it.

Do let me know your views in this approach and if it makes sense to lobby for and build a comprehensive education relief kit for children in low-resource settings.

The author is the founder of Sauramandala Foundation, a non-profit that aspires to work with communities that are extremely remote, vulnerable and disconnected.

This article was first published in medium.com. You can read the original article here.