In Post-Pandemic Classroom

Context: A Post-pandemic classroom must be centred around joyful and creative learning, join dots between children’s lives and education.

Case studies on experiential learning: May help in rethinking the teaching and learning process itself. 

• Rabindranath Tagore’s Shantiniketan: 
  • For Tagore, education meant much more than rote learning - “The highest education is that which does not merely give us information but makes our life in harmony with all existence.”
  • He dismissed any pedagogy that sought to cut children off from the world around them: “We are made to lose our world to find a bagful of information instead.
  • He disliked barriers of every kind, believing that education should not be separated from everyday life. Classes at Santiniketan were held outdoors, under an assigned tree, unless it was raining or if the lesson needed a laboratory.
  • Santiniketan’s approach was to help the whole child to learn through exploration — art, music, curiosity, and the careful observation of nature.
• Amartya Sen’s educational experience: 
  • Earlier, Sen began his education in Dhaka, where he ranked 33rd out of 37.
  • In 1941, due to fears of the possible Japanese bombing of the cities, Amartya was sent to Santiniketan,  where he found the environment stimulating and no corporal punishment.
  • The memory of famines would later lead to Sen’s pathbreaking research on famines, in which he showed that famines do not occur in functioning democracies.
• Karnataka’s Vidyagama programme: It began with a group of committed teachers creating informal, outdoor learning circles or “vataara shaale” during the pandemic.
  • Children gathered with a teacher for in-person teaching in small groups, in outdoor community spaces, not bound by blackboards and textbooks, but learning interactively through stories and activities.

Way Forward: To reopen schools, we should really open up our education system.

• Inclusive learning: Joyful and creative learning should not be an indulgence meant only for privileged children.
  • Every child should be able to learn in an atmosphere that is free, reflective and affirming. They should be able to relate new concepts to what they are already familiar within their own lives.
• Inquiry-based learning: Children can be encouraged, within the safe space of the learning circles, to discuss what they saw, experienced and learned during the pandemic.
• Outdoor learning: Rather than being cooped up inside small, cramped schoolrooms through the day, extending lessons into outdoor spaces, where feasible, will also improve ventilation (helping in preventing Covid spread).
  • This would be in line with Gandhi’s words - “I do not want my house to be walled in on all sides and my windows to be stuffed. I want the cultures of all lands to be blown about my house as freely as possible. But I refuse to be blown off my feet by any.”