By: Dr. Urfan Ahmad
We owe a great deal to the physical and social environment in which we grow. Human beings have tremendous capacity to ‘adapt’ to the environment. The home environment in which a baby grows offers opportunities for such changes ‘initiated’ and ‘improved’ upon by every individual during growth and development. But, learning can occur only when the one is active and alert and not just passive. All through this learning one has to pay sustained attention, interest and effort and one cannot learn casually anything serious. It requires dedication.
Watch a child learning letters and alphabets. He is likely to press the pencil lead hard on papers and break it often. He would hold the pencil tight and display a lot of tension. A careful examination of the above saying would convince us that predominant factor that runs through all is change in behaviour.
There is a distinct change or modification before learning: Newton’s third law of motion and subsequent to understand. The change is something that stays and does not fade soon. If it were to fade a little it could be revived with a little practice. Behind every change one could infer some internal modifications in a person. There might not be pronounced outward changes in an individual as a result of learning swim or sing skate, but, given an opportunity to demonstrate his skill one would display the marked improvement due to learning.
Prema Muralidhar says “As educational practitioners, we are committed to the wholesome development of the child and as we know, learning is not only about book knowledge, but also the physical, emotional social and mental wellbeing of the child.” Due to the lack of social interaction, online classes can cause students and faculty to experience social isolation. The online learning methods currently practiced in education tend to make participating students undergo contemplation, remoteness and a lack of interaction.
It may be also a cause for increase in stress, anxiety and ultimately harm the necessary communicational skills to be developed by students and can lead to serious negative effects. Online interaction can never fill the gap of social, physical interaction which is fraught with love, compassion and emotions and can never be achieved while we interact any other way. Children are easily and quickly bored with online learning and in most schools online classes are monotonous that requires students switching on and off the camera while being anywhere mentally- even physically sometimes. Besides this, the screen oriented learning also poses several health issues to the learners and trainers alike.
