Repeated school closures have led young students to forego learning at the grassroots level. The pandemic has transformed life within the four walls into imprisonment. Abandoning studies, home neglect and other factors have left an indelible mark on children as they miss out on rote learning leading to miseries in reading and writing habits, numeracy skills
and paraphernalia.

In the interim, inmates of primary classes in several institutions have been found to be in askance while recognising alphabets and many others have forgotten numerical tables beyond two and three. It has also been noticed that middle and high school children mostly from under-resourced institutions are in a state of oblivion about how to write descriptive answers.

Advertisement

All this and more, educationists think, could be a sequel to the oft-repeated hiatus. Students in junior classes would need pep guidance to practise at home and bridge learning gaps; this would help them restore learning curves and stay updated. However, those in classes 11 and 12 who have spent the last two years attending online classes from home and are susceptible to answering subjective questions shall need an awakening to survive. Teachers concerned about their wellbeing shall have a tough time carrying them to the cherished nirvana.

Many students in this category are likely to enter the university system with a weak foundation. Schools have a fettered environment. They have inbuilt enablers for reading, writing, etc and the systems there go by a strict following. School closures, therefore, mean an abrupt stoppage of cognitive learnings for yearning young minds.

The learning community needs to be rescued from such situations. Though they have been waiting for official notification to reopen, schools will need to decelerate in the rat race to complete syllabi for any particular class. Educationists all across have suggested schools be reopened to allow the remedial atropine for diagnosis and then going all out for the cure.

Even the Nobel Laureate Abhijit Vinayak Banerjee thinks that looking at the present Corona situation, schools must open at the earliest. So schools thereafter need to bridge the learning gaps taking into account the moribund and the fecund.

Public health specialists like Dr Chandrakant Laheria, of course, have said this far too often in the spirit of public health that though vaccination is a necessity to pre-empt Covid 19 infection, it is not a prerequisite for the under-15 age group which has proven to be the least vulnerable.