Corona Times: Lessons For Young Children

During corona pandemic, the problems faced by schoolgoing children are critical and serious. Their class exams generally get over in March. The new academic session begins in April before the summer vacation. When schools reopen by June end the children are usually familiar with their class, syllabus and textbooks. This softens their academic pressure. This April the new session could not commence. Examinations of Class X and XII were not over, when classes were disrupted in March due to COVID-19 outbreak.

When will the schedule for remaining exams be announced? When will the results come out? When and how will entrance exams for various higher and professional courses be conducted? How will admissions for higher classes, especially for medicine, engineering, etc., be coordinated? Further, when games and sports are as essential as learning of curricular subjects for an adolescent child, how will the ‘new normal’ of social distancing affect the physical and psychological upbringing of the child? All these are moot questions to ponder over. The reality is the modern system of schooling, which includes classroom activities, cooperative learning, admissions, examinations and resultant publications, in its entirety, is a kind of celebration and joyful ritual, which involves conglomeration and social gathering. However, the ‘new normal’ to encounter coronavirus is social distancing, a new terminology coined for meaning physical distancing without affecting social and psychological bonding. In such a critical time, what could be the way out for schoolgoers?

As an alternative to overcome the crisis quite a few schools and educational authorities have come up with their idea of virtual classroom. This means, children and teachers would engage in classroom processes by using without violating social distancing norms. No doubt, it is a welcome measure, provided the Apps that facilitate use of technology are foolproof and free from any virus or ulterior designs. When it comes to universal education, virtual classrooms will further widen the gap between children and dilute the goal of equality of education. In India, where children come from asymmetrical social and class backgrounds, their access to technology and devices would be a matter of worry. If the number of children having no access to such technology exceeds the number of successful users, this could not be a foolproof way out. Forget the rural folks; even all urban students might not be able to take its advantage. This necessitates the going ‘to the basics’ for a remedy.

The first alternative for children could be to read whatever they wish to.  Even detective novels with a superman hero or detective with the ability to catch the ‘most venomous criminal’ could not be a bad reading for an adolescent child. Many of us have graduated through such ‘pernicious’ reading in our childhood to become serious literature readers. Such reading habits may possibly supplement the curricular learning of social sciences and languages. A class VIII child going to class IX in July might have difficulties to do self-study of science or mathematics, but s/he could easily manage social sciences and language textbooks. Study of social sciences and languages, however, should not be confined to textbooks. The child should go beyond textbooks, a basic need for connecting the textbook knowledge with the knowledge outside. For example, if the history of Indian national movement is in the school syllabus, by taking a cue from it the child could pursue self-study on the liberation movements in other former colonies like Korea or Vietnam. Similarly, self-study of a Hindi short story by Premchand  in language and literature section could motivate her/him to go for reading of a Premchand novel or writings of other authors. The 4G smart phone, Google and Wikipedia in the absence of a local or family library could also be of immense help. The fact of the matter is, of late, social sciences and languages are often ignored as ‘superfluous’ for ‘pursuing medicine or IIT, etc.’, both in school and parental domains. This has seriously affected the learning habits of children in recent times. That young children can handle social science and literature learning even without active supervision of teachers and engage themselves in reading and writing is a common fact. Many children, despite having a natural liking for these subjects, are ‘aggressively dissuaded’ from studying these subjects even in school, where these subjects are compulsory, except at a perfunctory level. Now the children could make use of this time in seriously pursuing those subjects, though they may subsequently go for professional courses. Knowledge is one and subjects are supplementary to one another. There is a cherished relationship between science and literature or mathematics and social sciences. A litterateur with some knowledge in mathematics will be always over cautious of verbosity, and a mathematician with a liking for literature will seldom tolerate any linguistic and grammatical error in his expression and articulation. This corona crisis time could be best used by young children for self-studying these easily ‘comprehensible subjects’ and demystify the ‘cultivated’ gaps between various school subjects.

In a school curriculum, like the curricular areas, there are ‘other’ curricular areas, such as health and physical education and art education.  The ‘other’ curricular areas are often ignored by categorizing them as ‘extra’ curricular and ‘unnecessary’ appendixes. Painting, music, clay modeling, magic performances, storytelling and puppetry are a few examples of such ‘other’ curricular areas.  One could take even shoe mending, gardening and room cleaning in it. Outdoor sports are not suggested here, because of the ‘new normal’ reality of social distancing. The child could pursue any of these art forms on her own. Expertise in all these areas could never be the goal. But, a sense of appreciation for all these visual, literary and performing art forms as supplementary to a child’s holistic growth could be a sensible achievement in all times to come.

It is seen that very often parents prove to be an impediment in the way of these achievements.  The child’s sensibility gets hurt. The child may be very young. But, if his uniqueness and independent identity is not duly cared for, he rebels and might get reduced to a ‘spoilt child’.  Comparing him or her with other children, declaring him either to be less capable than his friends or far more capable than his compatriots like a ’superman’ or chiding him for his looks or behaviour could push him to that category. Now when the schoolgoer is at home 24×7 in the presence of parents, the issue of parenting will be constantly evaluated. Surprisingly, the formally-educated parents may not be in an advantageous position than the ‘illiterate’ and ‘uneducated’ ones in this regard. The traditional wisdom of parenting may ensure a better comfort zone to children. For example, parents with a single child may surely feel the brunt more than their counterparts.

Corona is a new problem; no one experienced it at least in last hundred years. The Spanish Flu of 1918-20 could be somewhat comparable to it; it wiped out nearly 40 to 50 million people. Spain, a neutral nation during the First World War, regularly reported spread of the flu,  while the Allied Nations and Centrist Powers deliberately hid its spread in their respective territories, lest they would prove to be ‘weak’ nations. Spain was chided as the ‘birthplace’ of the disease.  Hence, it was named ‘Spanish Flu’, though Spain was distantly related to its origin or spread. In the end, it became clear that those who hid the truth to sustain their ‘ultra-nationalist myth’ were bigger sufferers of the flu. This reminds one of the proverb, ‘history repeats itself’, when the US President called it (corona) the ‘China Virus’, and the religious minorities, whether they are Haredi Jews in New York  or Muslims in India in general, are pointedly blamed as ‘carrier’ and ‘deliberate disseminator’ of the pandemic. The young students could learn many lessons from this – the bad effect of hiding the truth and of spreading untruth and making scapegoats for hiding one’s administrative failure. Comprehending this and reading between the lines may ensure the children’s interest in social sciences.

However, there is a lesson more important than all these. The elderly people in the Indian family may not have any memory of Spanish Flu, which was called the ‘Bombay Fever’ and had taken a heavy toll in India.  Still the elder generation is definitely far richer than the younger generation in terms of many other challenges and experiences. The young children could provoke the elders to share them. Such transfer of experiences may enrich the young and sustain the old joyfully and meaningfully at a time when the worldwide news of corona affecting the old more could be very depressing and frustrating to the senior citizens. Such news has become another ‘new normal’. If Spanish Flu had affected the youth, corona’s softest targets are the elderly. History is repeating itself, but in new and newer forms. The schoolgoers are crisis-ridden because of the pandemic, but they could also be source of life and living for everyone at home, if they care to give a patient hearing to others’ experiences. That would not only engage them, but also help them explore many new lessons of life skills.

It is a fact that, like Spanish Flu or Black Death (1347-51), the corona pandemic will also go away. It is only a matter of time. Then only those, who would have fiercely fought it, would relish their lives. They may be health workers or elderly people or trapped migrant workers or young children. The contribution of young children should in no way be adjudged as insignificant, for they refuse to feel depressed and never hesitate to create congenial spheres for others including the elderly generation.  This engagement would no doubt be meaningful as well as very educative to them.