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Looking for 'learning' in Online Classes!

There is a saying that, Children 'walk' to school, they 'run' back to home. 

School from home is quite a paradox. I believe (even though many would disagree), children are not built to learn from their homes. Home means comfort, home means they are free to do whatever they want. Childeen can study at home but cannot consistently learn at their homes. 

Apart from the curriculum, a school teaches the importance of discipline, punctuality, curiosity, peer pressure, the way to conduct and carry oneselves, the social fabric, excel in sports and extracurricular and many such things. Exams in schools teach us how to work and perform under pressure, the importance of deadlines, the knowledge and the ability to reproduce that in exams and many many more. I still believe, schools lay the foundation on which a child goes on to build his future. 

Now, a computer screen has replaced the school environment and from what I have seen it is not even doing half the job what a school does. Learning online has not only become monotonous but also quite ineffective. 

These are testing times for schools and there are no easy answers but to begin with, I think children can break this monotonicity by getting involved in the classes by asking a lot of questions and a lot of engagement with fellow students and teachers can make students actually 'do what they are learning' by giving them more practical assignments and encourage the students to actually 'recreate' what they are learning and if things go well, we can extend these practices when actual school resumes. 

The 'actual' school environment is quite different wherein the entire academic year is focused and spent on completing the syllabus where as learning and engagement usually takes a back seat. 

Amidst the pandemic, education, especially the way learning is imparted is undergoing a massive shift. As schools will be shut for most of this academic year, they have time in their hands and they can shake this 'learning culture' by leveraging technology and the power of internet. 

And in the middle of all this, who knows, the students can also benefit from some 'actual' learning. 


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