Pakistan is one of the few countries that have fared well during Covid-19 while the pandemic is still raging at multiple points and levels. Along with many new businesses and demands of pandemic times, education has met its jeopardy because of the non-professional attitudes towards the digital online culture and a passing fancy idea about the radical changes that it very forcefully brought all around. Most of the students and teachers have taken this opportunity to upgrade their usage of the 21st century new normal but many have taken as an opportunity to relax and thrive on the state funded facilities and generous and compromising attitude of the evaluators and happily grabbing the degrees by simply paying the requisite finances to the universities.
After the new normal afforded opportunity to the learners to stay at home and feed themselves at their will on the instructions of their teachers in a dull and passive manner without having reached to the critical learning level and without developing in quality and quantity, the most demanded aspect of the students was to take the exams online via open book mode and they did remarkably well in these assignment based examinations and so the evaluation did not prove a proper test of the acquired abilities of the student. So far so good, yet it has created new dimensions among the students that they are yearning for the same free style learning and taking tests. Although a few of them have joined classes in person with some enthusiasm because a longtime separation from the institution created a longing to reunite again, yet the enforcements of rules, regulations, and teachers intensive infusing of information and knowledge is being taken rather boringly. Mostly students lack interest in equipping themselves with the skills they are required to successfully pass through in order to take up the jobs constructively in future. They wish to find the online facility again.
Same is the case with the in-person examinations where students are expecting easy question papers with the excuse that they have not been taught properly and there is no end to all relaxation demands. The authorities, students and the society, as a whole may be able to fulfill the gap by intensive teaching during the at campus sessions, yet the practical side of the learner would remain deficient. The laboratory and library work they are required to undergo, especially the professional schooling, needs to be intensively incorporated with the online learnings.
The time has come that we shift our teaching methodologies from a traditional lecture method to the doing-with-hands activities in the classroom.
Besides these academic and professional issues, there are psychological issues that are also raising their heads. Students are much bored because of the lack of education activities in the class room and there is a dire need of reviving class room and its liveliness along with the activities in the playgrounds. This must be associated with the extracurricular activities but with a little tinge of curricular orientation so that the classroom knowledge could be strengthened through these as well. This four-dimensional strategy can help a lot to improve not only the psychological dimensions of the classroom but also fill the gap caused because of online learning.
Mark Bracher in his book ‘Radical Pedagogy’ suggests that the learner needs to establish his identity in the classroom to become a fruitful member of the society. Online education diminished these opportunities. When a learner does not find this opportunity, he begins to find it outside classroom which is mainly in the negative aspects of society and thus make him a not-so-useful a member of the society. So, to tackle with such socio-educational loss, the institutions need to afford plenty of such opportunities to the learners in the shortest possible time, so that their psychological issues may be resolved and they may come up as successful social human beings.
The time has come that we shift our teaching methodologies from a traditional lecture method to the doing-with-hands activities in the classroom as John Dewey would suggest, to a complete progressive attitude to teaching and learning. This would equip our students with necessary practical skills automatically and would provide them a congenial environment to develop psychologically as successful human beings. Along with these two radical philosophies, the teaching should also be decolonized as Paulo Freire would suggest. He has rejected totally the rote learning because this way, according to him, we simply turn the learners into banks. He has suggested a revolutionary strategy of teaching by way of critical thinking which means to let the students raise questions on the traditional acceptable forms and concepts and then learn to find the answers.
The recent history has proved that human life would keep on facing varied type of pandemics which could be capable of causing, if not a total halt, at least, a change over to the regular path of human life more than often even. There may be even more closures and shut downs in future. So, to keep on with healthy learning and teaching, so that future generations may be even better equipped, we need to teach the young people through ways and means which may be useful and practicable and could be workable in all types of circumstances. It would, on the one hand, prepare us to cope better with the ever-repeating circles of pandemics but also, on the other hand, we would be able to keep our learners interested in the classrooms.
The writer is the principal of Emerson University, Multan. He serves as Adjunct Faculty at ISP, Multan; Visiting Faculty at NUML; BsU, Multan and English Dept Chairman Dept, GEC, Multan