Online Teaching for Kindergarten Children, a Big Joke Indeed!

• The moment educational institutions were mandated to remain closed courtesy novel coronavirus induced lockdowns, everybody associated with the academics went into overdrive finding ways to reinvent ways and means to replace the conventional method of pedagogy. Long-delayed examinations for crucial grades were postponed initially and had to be canceled eventually bowing to pressure generated by the worried parents.

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• Central Exam Boards went ahead and announced results as well for the pending academic sessions. A new academic session commenced a month back has a unique challenge to encounter where conventional teaching methodology had to be replaced with online teaching classes utilizing digital platforms.  Educational institutions already reeling under the impact of lockdowns were bracing up for an unprecedented challenge.
• Apart from convincing the parents to embrace the new teaching methodology, there was a hidden agenda too to ensure all pending and ensuing academic session’s school fees were collected. The reason mentioned ranged from genuine one’s vis-a-vis paying salaries to teachers and other staff to ensuring running overhead costs viz. electricity, water, maintenance, and security just to name a few to not so genuine ones like miscellaneous fees, lab fees, etc.

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• In its zeal to replicate conventional classes over digital platforms, educational institutions went overboard in devising lesson plans for pre-primary children too involving kindergarten grade kids. Daily online classes ranging from an hour to a couple of hours were introduced blatantly disregarding the fact that preschool children were too small to grasp the teaching for all its worth.
• Some smart and innovative educational institutions introduced the online classes for kindergarten by changing the nomenclature as ‘Engagement’ rather than name it as teaching. Though the so-called engagement included basic tenet of playschool learning, scores of parents were objecting vehemently deriding the practice as unscientific resulting in more harm to the children than helpful in strengthening cognitive purposes.

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• Caught in a bind, educational institutions had to not only tide over the crises of loss of revenue but also had to adequately brace up to face mounting pressure from the parental lobby least inclined to play ball by resisting nudges to clearing fees. Both parties are right in their ways though parents hard-pressed for various reasons could be excused for raising questions about the efficacy/veracity of online classes for kindergarten kids.
• After the guidelines issued by the Union HRD Ministry and the Karnataka High Court restricting to 30 minutes of online interaction with parents and guiding them to conduct the same, the raging issue appears to have reached a logical conclusion. Completely agree with the prescribed timings for kindergarten. Earlier drawn schedule indeed made a mockery of imparting classes, if it can be called so, to tiny tots grossly undermining the spirit of pedagogy itself.  Now, it stands corrected.