Covid-19 and the generation Z
Who would have thought this? Just when we started to look forward to the worldwide relaxation of lockdowns, the next damper is already on its way: Generation Z, so, those born between 1997 and 2012, will ‘never be able to recover’ from the consequences of the Corona crisis. What a great prospect to start your life!
Birgit, a good friend of mine, living in my hometown Bonn, drew my attention to an article in “die Welt am Sonntag”. The author, quoting an educational economist, made two aspects responsible for the expected “failure” of the adolescents of today: Lack of jobs and missing important months of schooling during the Lockdown period.
“The education system takes itself very seriously,” says Birgit with a rather ironic, bitter smile in her voice. She is a retired teacher and she is angry. “Do they really think that children only learn in school?”
In Bangalore, 7500 kilometers away from Bonn, Abhijit Sinha has exactly the same question.
Abhijit is a change maker with a lot of spice. He graduated from kanthari in 2015 with a brilliant speech that left a part of the audience, especially those who were in great support of the Indian formal educational system, speechless and in shock.
The school critic, who is still young but has already earned international recognition, has a lot of good things to say about his own primary school days in Mumbai. He was lucky to have teachers who, like Birgit, do not believe that learning must only take place in classrooms.
Abhijit writes: We learned how to travel safely, to speak well, we even learnt that teachers were not always right; all this, not only from the school, but from friends and people we met, and situations we were in. Movies, plays, night-outs, camps, Internet, gaming sessions, traveling, picnics, sports, walking around the city – everything added something. School-life was amazing, not because of the school itself, but for how we were discovering new things, and ourselves, each day in and outside of school.
And then he got to know the “real” education system. He got into a college, a prestigious college for gifted kids or for children of rich parents. “It was a waste of four years of my time!” he explained to a stunned audience during the Q&A session following his speech.
But Abhijit made sure that the “big boredom” didn’t kill his creativity and thus outside of class-hours, he invented a motorcycle ambulance for the famous Bodabodas (motorbike taxis) in Uganda, a $25 low cost water-saving urinal and a mobile app that tracks traffic accidents.
At that time, he also thought about, how an inspiring school should look like. He moved to a remote village near Bangalore and started his first NOOK, a community self-learning space. It is a place with tools, materials and internet, a school without teachers, where children have the chance to learn how to learn independently. Abhijit is the founder of Project DEFY. DEFY is an abbreviation and stands for “Design Education For yourself.”
Project DEFY is a non-profit which has worked with over 15 communities in India and south east Africa, to help create their own self-learning spaces.
In a chat, I mentioned the fear of international educationalists and economists, worrying about the strong disadvantages for the youth of today, mainly because of months of no school.
He jumped on this topic and agreed to have a Skype-interview with me and Chacko.
kanthari: Three months no school! A curse or a blessing?
Abhijit: Oh, I have heard it a million times, in India and from international non for profits: everyone is saying: “Oh my god, what a difficult situation. Our kids are not learning…!” Honestly, to me, it sounds very foolish! how can someone not learn? Just because they don’t go to school, they are not learning? That does not make sense.
I think, 3 months no school is not too bad. It’s a time to rest a little, to find out what you really want. When do these children get such a chance again during their 20 years of education? And is our system really so fragile that it cannot handle 3 months of no school?
The only problem that I see is that Schools are relevant for many sections in society. For example, children get meals in schools. Of course, That could be easily resolved. Food could have been delivered to people’s homes.
kanthari: How meaningful are examinations and how meaningful is school anyway?
Abhijit: A lot of people now ask that question. But unfortunately, they don’t think further. Instead of questioning they are waiting for things to get normal, not to get better.
I would have never thought in my childhood that if I miss an examination I would suffer later in life. Children don’t think like that. But parents would think like that.
Nobody is talking about learning here. All they are talking about is having access to the “Shop” called School. They are just worried that their kids are not going to school but what they ‘learn’ there, they are not worried about. Why not thinking, how learning is happening, just by the family being together?
The system pretends to care about children and to care about education. But if that were so, the system would have much better learning outcomes and it would care about mental stress the children go through.
But what is happening in India when the lockdown started? They said: “children cannot go to school, so let’s take the classroom to their homes.”
Instead of thinking, how can we work with children and their families to try out learning in a different way, all they did was starting classes online!
Now, children are sitting six, seven hours in-front of a screen, watching the teacher, like in a classroom. The teachers are still delivering the same nonsense, but, “wow! It is virtual! Such a different way of learning!”
Well, this is a significant down grade! for people like us who are working in alternative education, this is mainstream education, only worse. Online learning is like watching a boring movie for 7 hours every day. The only benefit of online learning is that the teachers will not be able to beat the kids.
kanthari: But what is learning?
Abhijit: Learning is still very much a social interaction. The best learning happens when people meet other people. When we ask what you remember from your educational past, you say: I remember hanging out with my friends. The idea is not just to get skills and knowledge but to co-exist and to exercise our emotions.
The biggest problem is not being away from school but not having social interactions. Many villagers find it extremely hard to not interact with each other. They do not just ‘Netflix and chill’. Daily life is meeting people, chitchatting, gossiping.
kanthari: And what is the role of Project DEFY during the lockdown?
Abhijit: We started to talk to rural families. The first thing we were doing, is to help them out with food and rent. At least now the families are not struggling with going hungry. Then they felt, its awkward to stay together for so long. One parent had a disappointment in her voice: “what can I teach my child? I am not educated!”
That was the start of our thought process: everybody has to learn together. Schools make us believe:
“if you want your children to be educated, send them to school. You are not capable of educating them. All you are capable of is paying for their education!” This gives parents the feeling that they are unable of having meaningful discussions with their children.
Mainstream organizations would say, ok, let’s teach the child some skills, some math, science, … But that is not what they need. Now they need to know how to handle the situation emotionally and socially. It becomes evident that the child is not alone, he/she is in a context of people. Isolated education is very difficult for children. Everything needs to be done in the context of the family.
Learning with the family together is the focus now. We started with a few families and talked 2 hours a day, helping them to structure their life. And we start with playing games.
Let’s look at this current situation. When (if ever again) would we be with the family together for 3 months. It could be an advantage. But it is certainly difficult to break the barrier of communicating. Before they only one hour per day with each other, now they have 24 hours together. People need help to reorganize their personal interactions.
The question is, can we use this lockdown to grow closer to each other?