I had a good experience to see online education from close quarters. The lady who works in my mothers house and stays in the outhouse in the backyard has two sons who are going to give their intermediate Board Exam in March. They have physics, Chemistry and Maths as their main subjects, besides English and Hindi for the Uttrakhand Board. The teachers just send them xeroxed material through what's app and it just collects in their phone. The two brothers share a phone and none of their friends read this material for none of them, they tell me, can understand any of this. Some times there is a voice in a notes and the voice is so low, that even with full volume I could not make any sense out of it. For English only the answers to the question is given and the children have no idea about the lesson and hence cannot make any sense of the answers and just ignore it. I picked up the text book and started teaching them in the morning and at night. The text book has the first lesson titled, The Last lesson, by Alphonso Daudet which speaks of the Franco Prussian war, when France is defeated by Bismarck, who is leading Prussia and the territory of Alsace and Lorraine that was a French territory till now goes into the German hand. For these Government school kids, where there is no help from home, and when they have no idea of what is Prussia, who is Bismarck and what is Alsace Lorraine how can they understand and write any answer or even comprehend what is there in the lesson when the lesson is not taught and only answered in few lines are sent through what's app. There are other lessons in the text by William Douglas, Deep waters, Christopher Silvester. There are lessons by Selma Lagerlof, A. R. Barton, Louis Fischer. Then there are poems by Kamala Das, Stephen Spender, Pabolo Naruda, John Keats, Robert Frost, Adrienne Reich. I saw a very impressive Board that is involved from the country in making this syllabus. Do they only think of students from St. Joseph, Sherwood, St Marys in making this.Many of them, I am sure will not be giving Uttrakhand Board. Do the Board even think about the Government Schools while designing the syllabus. Why cannot we have a content, mostly from India or from the Hills, the Himalayas that makes sense to these children. I would have been very happy to see a Ruskin Bond here. Any way, I have taken it upon myself to explain the lessons to these two boys Sonu and Mohit and in the last three days time I have seen a change in them and their excitement to read the English lessons. In my stay here, I want to finish their English texts so that they are able to at least understand some English lessons in which they have to give exams. I was surprised to know that even if they fail in one subject they fail the exam for there is no supplementary system in Uttrakhand Board. The English is so weak that they are not even able to read a sentence properly or understand the meanings of words like dread, scared, shanty, over the top etc. Yet they have to learn both prose and poetry and that too by many Westerners where the language is so tough and most of it in a foreign context. I am seeing only one subject and God knows what they will do in other subjects. They go for tutions in the evening, where the whole class comes for Physics, Chemistry. If private tutors can meet the students and hold a class why not the regular school. The children tell me they only went to their college once last week to fill up their board form and pay the fees. I saw so much of cluttering on their phone of all the six subjects and they have not even read it once. I really do not know how they will write their Board exams. All this online education, at least here for the Government colleges is a sham. What kind of learning is taking place, God only knows.
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