- Children are always vulnerable particularly in times of crisis and more vulnerable are those who are marginalized children. And, millions of children are fortunate to be able to access in most of the opportunities unlike those of marginalized children.
This era of the crisis has immense impacts on the most unfortunate children being isolated from all sorts of basic things. Education has been totally hijacked by the global pandemic and given to the minimal privileged children. Surprisingly, there is rare to see the rescuers for those underprivileged children, even government policy is not so effective.
The fact is, underprivileged children mostly study in the government schools and no government initiatives are seen in terms of continuing their learning in this difficult situation. Except for a few states whose government schools have done some good work on this front. Most private schools have done a lot of work on toes.
Few parents are homeschooling their children especially who are well off in terms of capacity but millions of parents are wondering what they can do for their children during this crisis.
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| Image source: Sulekha.com |
However, education can be carried out in any circumstances with proper action plans. It is true that the present situation is so scary but there could be some possibilities so as to intervene in some educational planning.
This short write up attempts to display some insights about how a government or any private organization could come forward for continuing education for the underprivileged children.
1. Deploying the Govt. teachers in non-four wall teaching: Teachers are always confined to be in the four wall classroom which is most popularly believed by large sections of people. But, it is an outdated belief looking at the 21-century educational perspectives. So, the government should come up with a certain policy where mentoring and home facilitation would be mandated for government teachers in most of the non-containment zones.
@: Mentoring: Mentoring children is a very essential part of lowering the risk of future school drop-out. The teacher is a leader of the discipline, can make door visit and mentor with proper safety measures. Mentoring based on the current situation and it's safety measures with a little bit of touching upon their daily activities would be very encouraging for both parents and children. The children of underprivileged could be supplied with few books and worksheets so that the children can be engaged at home.
1. Deploying the Govt. teachers in non-four wall teaching: Teachers are always confined to be in the four wall classroom which is most popularly believed by large sections of people. But, it is an outdated belief looking at the 21-century educational perspectives. So, the government should come up with a certain policy where mentoring and home facilitation would be mandated for government teachers in most of the non-containment zones.
@: Mentoring: Mentoring children is a very essential part of lowering the risk of future school drop-out. The teacher is a leader of the discipline, can make door visit and mentor with proper safety measures. Mentoring based on the current situation and it's safety measures with a little bit of touching upon their daily activities would be very encouraging for both parents and children. The children of underprivileged could be supplied with few books and worksheets so that the children can be engaged at home.
@: Facilitation of local crafts: Another option that teachers can do, is engaging the children in varieties of earthen and leafs crafts. Children should be given weekly tasks with different crafts each day such as mango, papaya, eggs, birds etc. And, children would write short notes each day on each craft about how she or he did it. This, series of activities till the end of the present crisis would not only engage a child mentally and emotionally but also would keep them in touch with the academic and mitigate the risk of school drop out in future.
Further reference:
Reflection is contributed by:
Satyasing Mushahary
Alumni of Azim Premji University (2014-16)
