Online Learning Institutionalized in India

Online education since Covid Lockdown time has become the defacto learning platform for schools, colleges and training centres across the world. There also have been several new models in education coming up with even entirely online schools coming up. We interacted with hundreds of students across several geographies in India to find the psychological issues in these schools.

While the rural and urban poor/middle class students had connectivity as main problem with internet coming in through mobile only, the rich did not have a problem taking another broadband connection for the kids. This one activity alone increased the broadband connections for service providers apart from the work from home of corporate employees during lockdown. Though work from home has ended for some companies, others are still continuing. 

An interesting trend that has become institutionalised is the huge percentage of work from home employees even after lockdown and covid ended. Companies are waking up to the huge bottomline advantages and higher productivity through work from home activities. Employees are also happy since it gives them the freedom of home plus most have taken up a second job apart from their prime job while working from their hometowns in tier-2 and tier-3 cities taking their spending to these towns.  

Another trend that has become institutionalized with interesting potential for the future is online schools. No physical campus, teachers spread across, students spread across. Anyone with technology access can start it if he can connect the right educationists. Including the principal, all are working from their own homes. 

While online education relieved students of long spells of class room coaching, it also gave them unbridled diversions through access to the internet and no parental supervision in many families. With working parents, it became mandatory for parents to let their children have separate access. Many children utilized this freedom to communicate more. More communication obviously leads to huge peer pressure. When we were schooling, we used to pass down notes student to student if we wanted something to be communicated to the entire class while class was running. Now, it is google chat for students. Teacher is teaching but students are happily chatting on google chat, even those who have to show their faces on a zoom call. I have seen several of these online classes for both schools and colleges. There is no way for the teacher to tell what the student is doing or whether the student is actually listening or being attentive to the teacher. 

While class is going on, children are chatting on totally different subjects. When asked a question suddenly, the common refrain is “madam, internet connectivity problem madam, did not hear your question, can u repeat again please”. Not just chatting, too much chatting obviously is leading to a lot of other diversions for children. The huge peer pressure to be a part of the Growing up club has forced many children to find their boyfriend or girlfriend as early as sixth grade children.  Years back when we read the Delhi Public School story, parents were concerned that high school students could be doing such things but these days, the grade is coming down especially being fueled by movies and tv serials where even small children are having childhood crushes and remembering them life long. 

One group I spoke with were compelled by their classmates to pick their boyfriends from within their class or senior classes. A parent shared with me the chat of their child with her classmate. If one looks at the chat, u will assume that it is a college student proposing love to his classmate but i was shocked when the parent said that it was by proposing to her sixth grade daughter. The parents were amused and laughing initially but then seriously took it to the boy’s parents. The boy’s parents too laughed it out but both parents did correct them both. It looks like mere infatuation at that age but the pressure to confirm at such a young age is so huge on children. In a Physical school, with a lot of activities and being forced to look at the teacher only during class, there is little time for interaction with other kids. Online classes have given children unbridled access to communicate. Many of these children have their own mobiles separate from their parents. The groups I noted on their whatsapp surprised us. There were groups per their hobbies, movie tastes, technology tastes, etcThese groups increased as children’s grades increased. More were witnessed for college students. 

Such conforming peer pressure acting on school kids obviously has an effect on children’s academic performance and overall performance. The parents we spoke with all complained of their A+ Grade students falling down to B+ Grades during the 1st two quarters of online training with them picking up only in the last quarter. Disturbing trend noticed in many children is the increasing gap of these children with their siblings. With so much time being occupied by their classmates only with chats going on through the day and late into the night on mobile, family time of these children has decreased. Many school children’s parents complained that their children have now suddenly developed a habit of crying when questioned about their obsession with the mobile and are almost fighting if they are separated from their mobile. They prefer to stay at home most of the time, not even coming out into the sun for some time or playing on the balcony. Even on weekends, children are preferring to sit at home instead of moving out with their parents. 

This behavioural change is concerning to parents. Parents are conversing with other parents and are finding similarities with other children too. Throughout the globe, parents are reporting angry withdrawn children with severe mental issues being reported. The UK government reported that the youth mental health services department were unable to meet demand during the pandemic. This is not just the UK alone., We are staring at a Global Youth Mental Health Pandemic. Parents are not able to understand why their hitherto active children have become so dull. This is particularly being noticed in teenagers and youth till age of 23, so roughly 12-23 year old students.  Parents are for the first time witnessing their children’s increasing RAGE. The children are also not able to understand what is happening to them and hence are responding by crying, feeling discouraged or demotivated for reasons unknown to them. 

Older children are happy that colleges have started. Online gaming, social media activity during lockdown and after grew exponentially. The extroverts are back to normal but the introverts are the ones who are feeling it hard to come back to normal so much that they are requesting their parents to continue their entire schooling online since they are more relieved being at home than surrounded physically by others in school.