Pandemic has taken a toll on the reading and writing abilities of children and helping them make up for time lost following the resumption of in-person classes is proving to be an uphill task, said heads of institutions.
The issue came up during a panel discussion on the “Impact of the Pandemic on Children’s Reading and Schooling” at Kolkata Literature Festival, held in association with The Telegraph, on Saturday.
Apart from plugging the learning gaps, the challenges include weaning the children off virtual platforms that they were forced to get accustomed to over the past two years, since the outbreak of Covid, and preparing them to face the crowd, the educators said.
John A. Bagul, principal of South City International School, said that over the past two years children had been affected mentally and psychologically and a lot of kids had gone into depression.
“When these kids return to school, they need hand-holding to take care of their emotional needs, rather than their learning needs because learning will continue,” said Bagul.
Seema Sapru, principal of The Heritage School, said that since the children had not experienced much in the last two years, their writing and reading abilities had been affected.
“One has to work a lot with them now…. There are parents who come and tell us the children are not comfortable in crowds, they can’t be with children of their own age. It has been tough on parents. Transition from normal life to online was tough. But getting back to the old normal is even tougher,” said Sapru.
Children’s author Priya Narayanan said a lot of children had transitioned from reading to visual media to watching programmes on TV and OTT platforms amid the pandemic and this had affected their reading habit.
“Children are now hooked on to those platforms and to take them back to reading books is a challenge…. It is the lure of visual media…. It is a very sad impact of the pandemic,” said Narayanan.
Bagul said the challenge to a large extent was to wean children away from the “magic world of OTT platforms”, which they were encouraged to take recourse to as learning was in the digital mode for over two years.
“This magic world of OTT and all is so much more lucrative…. To glue them away, we have to come up with more innovative ways. We have to see that children are more occupied with hands-on activities and get them involved in team work so they get out of their shells,” said Bagul.
According to him, the children are so glued now to Instagram and all those platforms that they think they are real. “It’s a tough challenge before us. One day at a time with full support of parents we have to go forward,” he said.
Madhurima Vidyarthi, a doctor, said it was important to reassure the children that it was okay to do certain things differently from what they did during the pandemic and ease them back into the real world.
Author Sasthipada Chattopadhyay said the loss that the children might have suffered was a minor jolt and would soon be remedied.
Illustrator Nupur Agrawal also spoke at the session, which was moderated by Sujata Sen, director of Kolkata Literature Festival.