Edtech needs to do some soul-searching as it powers ahead

“It’s like a superpower. I feel like I can solve any problem in the world,” says Shresth Kant, a 13-year-old from the North Indian city of Mohali, Punjab. Kant’s enthused conversation about coding is peppered with ideas about how to make the world better.

Among the many projects he’s working on is an app that’s designed to connect animal lovers.

“I used to feed biscuits to [stray] dogs and saw that many times, these animals were injured and needed help. People could use the app to keep track of the animal’s location and [check] if it has been helped,” he says.

It’s been almost one year since Kant began his coding classes through a Mumbai-based education technology company called WhiteHat Jr. The platform is meant for children between six and 14 years old.

Kant doesn’t miss going to school, he says. He’s quite happy with a day of classes on Google Meet.

Elsewhere in Patna, the capital of the Indian state of Bihar, another 13-year-old has a markedly different approach to virtual schooling.

On his phone, he signs in to mark his attendance. And then, as the teacher begins class, he sets the device aside and resumes playing whatever game he had paused. His video is switched off during classes, as are his friends’.

“The teacher will upload the notes later and we’ll just read that. There’s no need to attend online classes,” he says.

The teenager misses school. When the park nearby isn’t crowded, he tries convincing his mother to allow him to go out and meet the friends he would otherwise see in class.

And then there are parents worried about the way education is unfolding, like Neelesh Mishra, a father who pulled his young daughter out of school.

His primary issue wasn’t that his child was expected to show up for online classes every day in her school uniform or that there were 110 students in her class. Instead, his concern comes from the hullabaloo around teaching young kids to code, pressuring them further in a system where academic competition is already intense.

The last straw was when teachers disapproved of his five-year-old’s work because the giraffe she had drawn was multicolored.

Mishra isn’t the only one worrying about an education system that rewards conformity and rote memorization.

Tale of two countries

No child’s play

One size doesn’t fit all

Win them all

The future is hybrid