With the new academic year looming ahead, private CBSE schools are drawing daily schedules for online classes. Parents, however, appear to have mixed feelings on the evolving virtual teacher-student interface.
One section appreciates the idea of engaging the children with purposeful tasks instead of letting them idle away the lockdown period. Then, there are others who worry about the long-term impact of online classes on the health of their wards.
At the institutional level, government and aided schools find themselves stranded because the online mode is not viable for many of their students, who come from a lower socio-economic strata. CBSE schools, on the other hand, have easily switched over to online classes.
Heads of CBSE schools do not feel bound by the State government’s directive on online classes, citing the encouragement received from the Ministry of Human Resource Development
In fact, CBSE has already launched e-content of most of the subjects on Diksha platform of HRD Ministry. On its advice, many teachers attended an online training programme to adapt themselves to the virtual system, said the principal of a CBSE school in Tiruchi district.
Only some schools have taken cognisance of the parents’ concern by restricting the duration of sessions to less than two hours a day.
“The consequences of conducting online classes for lengthy duration will be multi-fold. The rigid posture of students in front of the laptops, computers or smart phones is bound to cause complications to the eyes and neck and also ears due to use of headphones or ear phones. Occurrence of refractory errors in the eyes will become inevitable,” M.A. Aleem, senior neurologist and former vice-principal of K.A.P. Viswanatham Medical College Hospital, said.
Ideally, there must be a 10-minute break for every 20-minute session to prevent such complications. Schools need to realise that extending the concept of classroom practice of 45-minute sessions will be detrimental to the health of students, Dr. Aleem said.
