ONLINE CLASSES

From Sampath’s Desk:

 

 

ONLINE CLASSES

 

(Solution or conundrum for stressed out school children?)

 

Adults and elders would have seen many natural disasters and health crises in the past. While the former included heavy downpours, floods, landslides, cyclones, earthquakes, tsunami, volcano eruptions, forest-fires, droughts and the like, the latter involved diseases, among others, Small-pox, Chicken-pox, Polio, Plague, Dengue, Chikungunya, H1N1 (Swine Flu), SARS, Ebola, etc. - but the current novel COVID-19 pandemic unknown to humanity till its recent onset is far more contagious and deadly than others. To prevent the spread of the virus, the whole world had gone into a self-imposed lockdown for months paralyzing and bringing normal life to a stalemate - for children, it is a grinding halt! Though we are trying to come out of the wild, we are yet to achieve it.

 

While the pandemic and lockdown have necessarily caused untold hardship and sufferings of sorts to all, they are impeding and hampering the physical abilities and disturbing the mental well-being of school-going children! In normal circumstances, these children would have a lot to do with going out of their houses and spending considerable time in school, interacting with teachers, co-students, peers and friends, including making and enjoying the obvious fun and frolic. Children in groups could be seen keeping themselves engaged in chitchatting, discussions, joking, and activities including sports within or outside school corridors or elsewhere, even in streets. Now that due to the pandemic schools remain closed, they are missing a whole lot through the main gateway and corridors of interaction having been snatched away from them for no fault of theirs. There is still uncertainty as to when the physical schools will open.

 

A child generally goes by emotions from an external rather than an internal point of view. As children develop language skills, they also develop the ability to regulate their emotions. Emotional self-regulation refers to children’s ability to monitor, evaluate and modify their emotional reactions to any given situation, or the one in the offing. It is a skill that develops over time and involves both responding to situations with socially acceptable emotions and developing the ability to withhold emotions or delay spontaneous reactions whenever or wherever necessary. A child’s temperament has a large impact on emotional self-regulation: children who are more negatively focused tend to have a more difficult time with regulation than those who are focused on the positive aspects of life. So, at home, they need some monitoring, guidance, direction and wise counseling. With schools closed and teachers not being there to regulate and guide the children, they miss half the world. And parents have a tough time managing the children always forced to be at home.

 

April and May are supposed to be holidays for children which meant many delights for them. With their confinement to home now, they have been compelled to be immobile. This smacks of clipping the wings of the birds and encaging them too. Schools offer daily rendezvous to children. Unable to pursue children-specific activities, enmeshed in ennui and languor as they are now in a lockdown, they feel annoyed and harassed. They thus sit at home in a state of trance, as they miserably miss their usual quota of playing and merry-making besides their core activities. There are of course video and other visual games available for them to kill time on computer, mobile or other electronic platforms. However, they are not effective substitutes or replacement for their physical exertions/sports, personal meetings and interactions. To think of a child without freedom of movement and liberty of sorts is preposterous. We, the adults, understand the situation and adapt to it. But children can’t, and obviously don’t. With school reopening deferred sine die, they miss a world of their usual opportunities.

 

Online classes now conducted by many schools are of course a solace for them to spend some time usefully. But that cannot replace the traditional classroom lectures where you have ‘face-to-face’ and ‘eye-to-eye’ contacts. The online sessions are only virtual, simulated or feigned ones and can hardly match real time school life. One may think that online classes may enable a child to learn or study in the midst of all comforts that go with ‘stay at home’. There is however a risk of children not lending his/her ears or faking attention to online lectures with known disturbances and distractions, natural and/or manmade, at home. So, resorting to telecons/other interactions over mobile and other Internet-enabled soft media have become common among them now. They however hardly match ‘live events’. But what to do? After all, the show must go on!

 

Parents and elders should counsel children on right lines at this hour of their psychological stress. However, the situation itself may teach them a positive life lesson, ‘difficulty is also an opportunity, use it judiciously!’

 

 

R.SAMPATH