Online Classes: Paradox Of Urban Vs Rural India

During the COVID-times, we are seeing a lot of paradoxes around us in terms of health, safety, hygiene and many more across the globe. However one such paradox caught my attention, when CBSE announced the reduction in the syllabus by 30%, it was celebrated and cherished by many schools, kids and their parents in metros and other big cities where online classes, online tuitions and learning on various online applications has become a new normal. These metro kids really got happy after the announcement because their struggle was not to complete the syllabus, rather how to get better in that, so with the announcement of CBSE, their aspirations grew bigger and now the conversations are to score better and better. On the other hand, there is a contrasting scenario in smaller cities and towns including villages where CBSE schools are still not able to come to terms with online classes. They are facing some severe challenges in ensuring smooth online classes since internet availability, bandwidth and speed etc. are huge dampeners to make it a reality of the day. 

The challenges don’t finish there only, many children don’t have laptops, computers and smartphones to their disposal to attend their daily classes. These children are still not able to complete a single chapter satisfactorily in the last 3 months or so. Schools are trying their best to get the confidence of these children and parents so that they can run the operations smoothly and also the livelihood of all the teachers and other staff. At the same time, there are some village panchayats who understand the importance of education are using other means of taking the classes forward, as the use of public announcements systems to reach to the students. 

Someone needs to get up and take notice of this situation and do something about it. Thousands of such schools are also the backbone of those micro-economies. 

Mohan Tiwari

Guest Author The author is renowned career counselor with experience of counselling thousands of students all across country. He has given many programs on careers on radio and television etc. He has helped thousands of students in shaping up their future and careers.He is the Founder and CEO of Students Destination.com