Evescape

COVID-19 impact social life & learning of CHILDREN By Percy Cardozo The COVID-19 outbreak was like a bolt out of the blue, stopping the world in its tracks. Cutting across all boundaries - natural or man-made, it has struck us silently at lightning speeds, causing unusual disruption to our daily routines. Never in recorded history has the world experienced such a catastrophe simultaneously affecting almost all regions of the world. The pandemic is primarily a health crisis but is it also having shattering consequences on every aspect of our living. The insidious virus has forced countries across the world to use lockdown as a preventive measure for the safety of its citizens.   Countries have rightly resorted to lock down as a preventive measure, nevertheless, suddenly it has thrown children's social life and learning out of gear. According to UNESCO, as of April 2020, 1.5 billion young people worldwide are out of school because of the pandemic. In India, almost 1.4 millio...

The power of our mother language Soumya, a student of class two of a government primary school at Borda, near Margao is carefully reading out a small note written in Marathi. The seven year old hails from Karnataka and lives in Gogol with her parents and siblings. Her father works as a daily wage painter. She says she can speak Kannada but can read Marathi. She is preparing to give a talk on the importance of mother language at an event conducted by an NGO in the school premises to observe International Mother Language Day. As I look on to the child with interest (I am invited by the organizers as a guest of honor), her teacher tells me -- Soumya is bright student! In another corner, a group of little children are preparing to enact a skit and sing a song in thethi, a dialect sounding like Bhojpuri. Their teacher tells me that this group of students belong to a district in Bihar. There are more students as well -- natives of Maharashtra, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, West Bengal, ...