A Chink in the Imagination
Rethinking the Meaning of Learning

Paromita Vohra answers the final question of this letter exchange posed by German Professor of Sociology Jan Paul Heisig: “Can you find at least some indications of how the experiences of the past months might also lead to changes for the better in India?” While the disparity of digital access raised many questions of educational scarring, the pandemic also offered an opportunity to reimagine education away from its formulaic structures.

By Paromita Vohra

As you rightly point out Jan, the pandemic has exacerbated inequality all round and this has impacted children deeply. The lengthy closure of schools and the dominance of online education has both, widened and deepened the gap between poor and affluent children. More than 25 per cent of children in households with a smartphone could not access it. For very young children especially, those who had not yet managed a toe-hold into education, this means a tremendous difficulty in catching up - a reduction in their opportunities in education- , which is referred to by some as “educational scarring”.

To search for a light in the dark is nevertheless necessary and one might even say, not impossible. The two ways one can do this for India, I think are through the idea of larger awareness on the one hand, and by examples of difference on the other hand.

The COVID-19 crisis, as it has often been discussed, threw into focus the difficulties and divisions that existed in societies even before the pandemic. The precarity of poor school children was heartbreakingly clear – underscoring the difficulties of poverty. Many poor parents held close the idea of sending their child to a private school as a way of giving the child a better future. There has been a tremendous push to privatise education at all levels in India. This would roll back the mobility that public subsidised education offered and make good education inaccessible to a large number of students.

Leading by Example

With the employment pressures of the pandemic, many children dropped out of school, but especially so, out of private schools. Commensurately, enrollments in government owned schools rose significantly. The example of the Delhi municipal government is a hopeful one. Because the government had been focusing on strengthening public school infrastructure, building relationships with parents and providing a good quality education to underserved populations, the pivot to digital classrooms and blended education was slightly more effective in Delhi, with 93 per cent of students being able to access some degree of schooling – either digitally or through worksheets that could be taken home.

Regular examples of citizens stepping up to confront the issue have also recurred. Bharti Kalra, vice-principal of a government run school in West Delhi, recounted that many students of her school couldn't attend online classes as they did not have laptops, tablets or smartphones. Having understood the issue was far more systemic, she started a collection drive, collecting 321 smartphones through her family and friends that enabled students to attend online classes.

Although it might be easy to dismiss such acts as merely charitable, I believe they are part of a number of citizen’s initiatives that arose during the pandemic and drew attention to public needs, and which could gradually become part of the mainstream political discourse.

In other examples we also saw that students who were traditionally excluded from physical schooling systems, such as the ones differently-abled, could potentially be included through digital means. An example from the Pratham Open School Organisation shows how a modified digital tool helped such students to take assessments remotely. In times when all schools needed to be attended in person, these students had to rely on translators, writers and others, to physically help them participating in exams and learning assessments. Now as schooling took place online, a prompt solution was found on how to include them. This story points to how inclusive solutions are an issue of resources – but they are also a question of imagination.

Contemplating the Future of Education

If there is something the pandemic repeatedly asks of us, it is to try and reimagine our default assumptions and positions. As the pandemic compelled teachers to teach online, they found all kind of solutions to keep children interested. Sometimes it was a matter of reaching out to them with resources. At other times, to incorporate more play time or more interactivity to engage the students.

And while children had no teaching, has their time been utterly meaningless? As Rukmini Banerjee from the Pratham Open School Organisation said in a public discussion: “Although learning has happened for children, it is not the only thing that counts in schools. How can the things they have learned – whether through play, through observation or even participation in the household – be built on to strengthen their agency, their ability to learn more and their path to a viable adulthood? Could we think of reimagining what it means to receive an education? Do we move away from an education that simply expects children to learn a pre-conceived syllabus and passes or fails them on that basis?”

Or can schools and learning itself be more fluid in content, form and intent? These are hopeful questions that are slowly arising around us as we contemplate the future of education system. My hope is that the questions will yield more debate and some reconfiguration of how we as a society see our children’s lives and learning as a whole.