New Delhi: Education sector has faced a lot of challenges in the last one year due to the pandemic. Cityspidey held a LIVE session along with the experts from Upkram Educational Foundation to discuss the challenges faced by the children from both urban and rural areas with their solutions.
CitySpidey spoke with Kiran Tiwari, co-founder of Upkram Educational Foundation and Nikhil who is director and co-founder of the organisation.
The session started with the question, “What was the aim to start Upkram Educational Foundation,” to which Tiwari said that the foundation was laid in February 2018 with the aim to support rural kids with education, by building their base.
Tiwari shared that she belongs from Sonbhadra district in Uttar Pradesh, she herself has gone through the struggles that a student from rural area faces. Sharing her story, Tiwari said that she acknowledged the issues that they faced and when she met like-minded people who wanted to do something about it, that's how the organisation started.
Talking about the students from the rural parts of India, Tiwari shared that she came across many students who passed 8th standard but were unable to read and understand 3rd standard textbooks.
On this, Nikhil added that their organisation focusses on giving new learning exposures to the kids. He said in the rural areas, there are schools and teachers but they still lack the essential use of technology. “People have accepted it as their fate, and have left their hope on improving their standards,” said Nikhil.
Lockdown has affected the whole system of learning process. At every stage, kids get to learn different things so the educational process can't really afford a gap.
In the last one year, things have changed drastically, and schools have adapted the pattern of online teaching. Damini, CitySpidey's moderator, highlighted that the techie teachers and students could adapt the new system but pan India, most of them couldn't get along with these online platforms. Thus, increasing the gap between the teacher and the student. The decreased social interaction and the lessened one-on-one interaction has led to anxiety, fear and depression in students.
During the session, it was discussed what roles the parents and teachers could play to balance the minds of the youngsters. Nikhil shared some fun-learn techniques to interact with little children. These techniques included playing snake and ladders with the children, he said that will help them count till 1-100, he also said that such games could introduce them to mathematical concepts like addition.
Even though offices and going out restarted after the first wave of Covid-19, schools didn't reopen keeping in mind the safety of children. Parents and teachers were still concerned about the lockdown hampering their child's education and future. Nikhil shared how critically the lockdown has impacted the children psychologically. He said both urban and rural students have been victims of this pandemic. He explained that online classes have decreased the interaction that a child used to have when schools were open.
The isolation from the same age group of children caused depression in them. Children have seen their near and dear ones being worried and mourning the loss of their loved ones. This caused trauma to the students, said Nikhil.
With this, he also shared issues that the less-privileged children faced. Firstly, he said that they did not have access to techie devices and secondly, they started to migrate. For them, it was a total cut-off from learning. He shared that the people who had phones faced network issues as not every child was privileged with a WiFi connection at their homes.
The conversation got interactive as it moved forward. The viewers engaged and commented about the session being an enriching one, they enjoyed the reference to Ramayana as well! Tiwari said she taught the primary kids while Nikhil taught the children of higher classes. The viewers eagerly asked questions that were answered by the experts.
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