The only option? Distance learning in North India during the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

During the COVID-19 pandemic, most Indian schools were closed for nearly two years, despite extensive evidence showing most children could not access online learning. In our interviews with those affected by school closures in North India, teachers and parents who could access online learning described it as ‘the only option’. This aligns with the dominant framing of EdTech, both nationally and globally, as a positive and inevitable feature of learning futures. However, parents who could not access online learning stressed that it was not an option for them and called for in-person learning to resume. Although several alternatives to online learning were available, and all interviewees described some of these, for many this did not dislodge the idea that online learning was ‘the only option’. This marginalisation of alternatives is a form of ‘technological inevitabilism’ that facilitated a lack of urgency in reopening schools and a widening of education inequities.