For many, online classes are a problem rather than solution

For many, online classes are a problem rather than solution

Srinagar: The School Education Department is trumpeting about conducting “online classes” amid the Covid-19 lockdown, but for many students and parents in Kashmir these classes are creating more problems than they are solving.
The online classes for students are being held through the mobile application ‘Zoom’, as well as on WhatsApp. The government is also using radio and television to teach students.
But for Murtaza, a Class 3 student in Budgam district, the online classes are inaccessible because he has no smartphone. His family’s only smartphone is with his father, who works in the police department and is currently posted in Jammu.
When the private school where Murtaza is enrolled started holding online classes, the little kid was forced to move to his paternal aunt’s place in the nearby village, where he tried to attend the classes on his cousin’s smartphone, which also did not turn out to be successful either.
Murtaza’s teacher now randomly forwards the “study material” and “home work” on the WhatsApp number of one of his relatives.
It is for similar reasons that Farooq Ahmad, a parent from another Budgam village whose two wards are studying at a renowned private school, thinks that the so-called online classes are a futile exercise.
While the school teachers regularly send the study material to his wards, Ahmad sends his wards to two different tutors to make up for the lost academic period due to the prevailing pandemic.
Parents are complaining that it is not practically possible for their kids to attend the online classes, which would require individual smartphones or computers that they do not have.
Zohra, a Class 1 student living in Srinagar’s Bemina area, says her online classes and that of her brother Abdullah’s, who studies in Class 4, were scheduled simultaneously by the school but between the two of them there is only one smartphone.
Many parents say that the online classes have put extra burden on the family budget in times of financial crisis as they had to buy an extra smartphone (or more) for their kids. Furqan, a Class 8 student from Budgam, is one such student whose parents had to buy a smartphone especially for him to attend online classes.
Parents suggest that the government should come up with an alternative and a more effective way of teaching.

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