The loss of a year

 The loss of a year.

The Covid 19 pandemic has hit the world real hard. The education field is no different.

Schools, colleges and educational institutes find themselves unprepared for it and are scrambling to find ways to keep organisations afloat online. They are experimenting with new methods and trying to use technology to reach to the students.

In all this a question that is constantly popping up from all sections of parents is how soon are educational organisations going to be fully functional. 'When is the board going to decide the exam dates? What about the competitive exams? What about regular schools? When will they teach and when will they do the assessments? When will preschools be fully functional? My child will lose one full year! Who will compensate?'

My child will lose one full year! Who will compensate ? 

When you hear a parent saying this, it gets me wondering what are they talking about. What do they mean by one full year?

Being an educator associated with the school sector,  I have always wonfered about the pressure parents, schools and children have put on themselves about losing a year. 

How does one lose one year in that, just by not being part of an organisational set up.

Education in India was highly skill based till the British took over and converted our self sufficient model into something that would develop educated clerks to run their offices.

The present model of schools has time and again come under severe criticism by many educational thinkers . Within school systems , there are many teachers who try to break the rigid models and help children blossom into wholesome adults. 

Why do we then  have this question? 

I have come across this question from young parents whose children are just two or three years of age and are looking for admission into the play schools. 

There are parents of students appesrnige for board exams who have the same question.

There are parents of students who have prepared for competitive exams asking the same thing.

There are parents of university final year graduates asking the same question.

This only brings about the total dependency of the human community on institutional eduaction. 

How does one lose a year? Its not a toy or a book to be lost. A year is 365 days of experience. A year is days and nights of learning with or without an institution behind it.

A year is days of reading books, singing songs , dancing, cooking, playing and living life.