Tag: #divide

K SHAPED…

It has been over a year, the world is still battling the devastating coronavirus pandemic. While rich countries more or less have managed to mitigate, to an extent the adverse effects of the pandemic thanks to their higher and faster vaccination coverage, low and middle-income countries are still desperately seeking vaccines to cover their vulnerable population groups.

US economy is slowly showing a positive uptick so is the case with other rich countries and China.US retail sales increased in June as demand for goods remained strong. Israel is considering the option of booster shots to its already largely vaccinated population after few instances of breakthrough infections. while Israel’s actions are truly justified given the severe nature of the virus, it sometimes feels a little unjust when we consider the cases of many low-income countries where healthcare workers are not even administered with a single shot. Vaccines nationalism as a result of the pandemic is not surprising and given the already deep wide divide between rich and poor countries the pandemic has further exacerbated this divide. Also within the poor and middle-income countries, the gap between the rich and poor has drastically increased.

According to Pew Research analysis, the number of poor in India is estimated to have increased by 75 million because of the pandemic recession. Many economists attribute India’s sluggish recovery post to the deadly second wave to dampened demand. While this may be true as the majority of the population in India fall under the low or middle-class category who’s the ability to spend has been severely compromised(affecting demand). But this is one side of the story. Recently Santosh Iyer vice president of sales and marketing, Mercedes Benz India, told that the company is seeing strong demand for its product, and supply-side constraints have made their customers wait longer. He further adds that sales and demand are back to pre-pandemic levels. This indicates that these upper classes especially in economic terms were not affected as Mercedes Benz’s target market usually comprises the upper class who prioritize luxury.

Hence the rich grew richer and the poor given their already vulnerable state further slipped into pathetic poverty.

Virtual Classrooms – An Alternative for Classroom learning

When the lock down was announced our whole educational system came to an abrupt stop. Now we had to depend on online apps and webinars to learn.

 Until the lock down period was announced most of us were not even aware of the existence of such apps.  By the time lock down was announced the fame for an app like Zoom, had won over the millions of people across the world. It was one of the popular apps used around the world to conduct meetings. It accommodated more than about 100 participants.

First times in online classes are always a headache because half of the people  forget to turn on the audio and camera. Not only us but teachers also have hard time in finding different functions.  Online classes are always an advantage in situations where classroom learning cannot take place but in many strong opinions it can never take over the idea classroom learning.

To the other side of online classes, it opens us to a world of disparities between the elite and the middle class and the poor. An online class eliminates the human connection that a face-to-face, in-house teaching environment provides. An online instructor cannot gauge the mood, involvement and engagement level of her students the way she can in a traditional lecture-based classroom.

There are a lot of problems with online learning. Most of the students will face difficulty in connecting with the teacher. Without a proper connection at home for internet, students will find difficulty in attending the classes. Proper 4G connection is need for the smooth conduct of meeting in Zoom. This creates a digital divide between the students. Not all students can afford a phone or not all will have a proper connection. This creates a differentiate between the haves and have nots. 

Such a simple issue as this can really draw us attention over the issue of network and internet connections, but what most of us forget is in some states of India, internet connections have been cut off which makes it very hard for students in that are to attend class.

Zoom classes does not allow you to enhance your learning capacity. It doesn’t provide for any kind of learning other than the academics. Sometimes the app would crash and there would be a lag.

Most of the times when classes go on, the system gets lagged and create network problems due to which students wont be able to focus. Students are forced to sit in front of their phones for hours listening to lectures which can have a lot of effect on their eyes as well as their thinking capacity.

Sometimes classes are taken without giving any breaks in between, this can cut off the span of concentration of a student. One person can normally concentrate to max to max half an hour without any other thoughts barging in, with proper breaks in between it becomes easier to learn.

Taking all these facts into consideration we can come to the conclusion that online learning may not always be an alternative for classroom education. Being in touch with human beings and socializing with people is what develops a persons character.

Most of us learn from school, from what we see and hear we develop into better versions of ourselves. Being outside in the sun, playing in the mud, reading a book to bed etc adds up to the character of a child. In all places learning by experience matters.