Back to school

This was an interesting eye-opener about how the discourse of learning-loss with respect to students feeds into the deficit mindset.

The middle school boys from Bhosga last year who took harvest contracts and earned money during the pandemic, we see you. We see that you are doing your best to learn from life and thrive in the present circumstances.
We see you now coming in for the Anandshala everyday late at night after a days work. Especially the girls who have the added responsibility of the household chores. Prithvi, we see you, working the whole day and then teaching the kids in the evening with so much enthusiasm. Managing in a room without a door, taking the light bulb with you every night so that vandalism would not affect the learning on the next day. We acknowledge you attending the facilitator’s meeting on the phone while you were harvesting soyabean.

Although the video referes to the American educational system, the discourse is no different in India. The rhetoric of skill-loss or learning-loss is all pervasive with the AP report and a variety of education experts commenting on it primarily as they build an argument for schools to open again.

I am not against schools opening. It is necessary in most places. However, focusing on the skill loss puts us (teachers, policy makers, administrators, education experts) on the defensive. Can we acknowledge that the children lived through a pandemic just like we did. They learned to live in a pandemic, they survived. Can we plan teaching and learning acknowledging the fact that each child brings something to the table? It is not just the teachers or the people who design the curriculum that have things worth giving.

Schools are not the only places learning happens. Children coming back to school are not leaky buckets left half empty that teachers now have to fill upto capacity with herculean efforts. Pandemic did not freeze them in place. Just like all of us adults, they lived through it. Lets try to connect back with that experience in mind.