If Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal’s aim was to set the Yamuna on fire by starting India’s “first virtual school” on Wednesday, he has miserably failed. Such a School was set up last year under the open school system and it was inaugurated by the union education minister. Kejriwal has invited applications for admission to Class IX from anyone who has passed Class VIII examination from any recognised school. There will be no fees and students from anywhere in India can enrol as students subject to the condition that they will have to be physically present in a school in Delhi to appear for the examinations. If the aim is to attract poor students, especially girl students whom the parents do not want to send to regular schools, it is defeated by the condition that they will have to come to Delhi for a few days every year.
Kejriwal says that Classes will be held online and the students will have to attend them to remain on the rolls. He chose the wrong time to do this experiment. By now the people have a clear idea of how virtual classes are held. Two years of Covid forced the school managements to provide online classes to their students. Every parent of every student who attended virtual classes has a fair idea of the strengths and weaknesses of the system. Studies conducted by academics and educationists have revealed that virtual classes are not a substitute for regular physical classes. Students learn many things from the classrooms where they have to perform on a day-to-day basis. They are always under the gaze of the teachers who know their levels of learning and can advise them accordingly. Such interactions are not possible in virtual classrooms.
In fact, studies clearly show that there was a drop in the academic standards of the students because virtual classes are not a substitute for physical classes. What’s more, the huge gap between the rich and the poor was widened during the pandemic period because the rich students had the advantages of 24-hour Internet and devices like the latest computers and headphones, etc. Poor students often had to make do with an ordinary mobile phone on which their parents and siblings also had a claim. Data plans were also not cheap for them. It can verily be said that the poor students who studied in government schools and village schools have virtually lost two years of education, a fact that can easily be verified. When Covid was brought under control and schools started regular classes, the affluent sections were the ones to get back to schools, not the poor. That is because they knew the deficiencies of the online classes. Whether Kejriwal realises it or not, his virtual school will not be patronised by those who can afford to send their wards to schools. It is just a gimmick to fool the poor.
When delay becomes the judgement
Nobody writes the horoscope of a dead child — it is farcical and pointless. The contempt of court case against then UP Chief Minister Kalyan Singh and others, who promised the Supreme Court that no one would be allowed to cause any harm to the Babri Masjid, was equally absurd. For one thing, Singh is no more and so are many of the accused. Even the so-called crime they committed underwent a transformation. The Supreme Court verdict in 2019 was in favour of those who assembled at Ayodhya on December 2, 1992, and demolished the Babri Masjid brick by brick. In other words, those who caused contempt were the ones who were declared victorious. It is not unusual for courts to witness the defendant turning into the accused in the course of a trial. The 2019 verdict did not describe the demolishers as criminals for it ended up rewarding them for their labour.
The three-member Bench headed by Justice SK Kaul and comprising Justices AS Oka and Vikram Nath used the term “infructuous” for describing the state of the contempt case. Nobody will find fault with them, particularly when they cannot punish Kalyan Singh who was the one who promised the court that the centuries-old mosque would stand. The judges lamented the fact that the case was not heard in time. Yes, they hit the nail on the head — for the lapse was of the judiciary which dilly-dallied, while those who caused contempt of the court built a brilliant political career on the debris of the masjid. In other words, the delay became the judgement in this case. The irony is that there are thousands of cases which have, over the years, become infructuous, though they do not hit the headlines as this one did.
