Coimbatore: Earlier most of the households had single mobile phones that usually belonged to the fathers, but now even a kindergarten student has to have one to attend online classes due to the COVID-19 lockdown imposed across the country.
Coimbatore: Earlier most of the households had single mobile phones that usually belonged to the fathers, but now even a kindergarten student has to have one to attend online classes due to the COVID-19 lockdown imposed across the country.
Since lockdown was announced, all children have been made to study online. Many of these students are suffering from depression. The life of professors and teachers, who are paid 20,000 to 25,000 a month in private colleges and schools, have turned topsy turvy. We come across news everyday such as science teachers have taken to rearing cattles and Tamil teachers to cutting wood and farming.
Under the circumstance, St. John's School, a private educational institution in Coimbatore, offers online education as well as the option of learning farming practices to its children. To insist on the importance of agriculture as the backbone of the country, a separate group has been introduced to the students of Std where they are introduced to farming. Since there are no students in school due to lockdown, the school management has turned their 1 1/2 acre ground into a farm to grow native crops.
The school principal Bhaskar said, "We have been doing nature farming at our school since 2016. For the first time in Tamil Nadu, we have introduced an agriculture based class in class XI. Through this they learn the basics of agriculture. We used to bring the students to the garden here even when the schools were running."
He added, "They water the plants themselves, pick weeds, and take the produce home. Through this, I hoped that they would know the true state of agriculture and be able to understand everything through practical education rather than reading a couple of pages from a book. It yielded good results. Lockdown has not only affected student's education but also the teacher's profession. Many of them suffer very much. We came to know that some of the teachers who worked at our school are rearing cattles and working in the wild, so we called them right away and asked them to come here."
He said he requested them to do farming here in school if they are interested, so the teacher started teaching online classes in the morning and in the evening they started farming. They planted native vegetables like ridge gourd, bottle gourd, bittergourd, sunflowers, peanuts, mushrooms and so on. They took the produce home and the excess was given to the farmers. The efforts of the principal and the teachers took the fruits of farming to the students too.
School Correspondent Aravindan said that they experimented with home terrace gardens which yielded good results then started cultivating in unused land within the school. He said the look, touch, feel and learn experience from the vegetables including tomatoes and chillies etc has a good impact on children.
He said bookish education is no match to practical education. Since many including teachers do not have access to the internet and are out of work, they invited the teachers to their school immediately. They teach in the classroom at school in the morning and do field work in the evening. For agriculture, a separate unit has been started and functioning in their school for the first time in Tamil Nadu. He says the same can be achieved if all private and government schools make efforts. He said along with online classes, knowing about agriculture will guarantee a bright future to the students.