Monday, June 13, 2005

Kya School Hain Hum!

Today is my soon-to-be-six year old daughter's first day at school. Or is it her last day of childhood? My heart is heavier than her new, big-girl schoolbag as I see her off at the bus stop. Playschool, nursery, kindergarten - those are mere preparation for separation. Class One is the rough, rigorous, Real Thing.

Twenty odd workbooks, textbooks, notebooks. As we sat covering them in regulation brown paper, I noticed they were a lot more colourful and child-friendly than the schoolbooks I remember. Still... they seem like way too many, especially to carry back and forth.

Not long ago, CBSE asked the 6000 schools across the country following its syllabus to reduce the school bag burden. "Schools should also not set any homework for students of classes I and II," CBSE Director (Academics) G Subramanian said in a circular.

Some schools are making provisions for lockers. Most aren't. What's most frustrating is that what you feel on such issues - as a parent - really doesn't matter. You may be a 'consumer' of education, paying a pretty hefty fee, but the general attitude of schools is 'take it or leave it.'

No doubt the school cannot satisfy every pushy parent but the more fundamental issue is about balance of power. That lies squarely with the educators. I wonder whether it's partly to compensate for the fact that teachers - even principals - are one of the lowest-paid professionals in society.

There are times when I swear I can hear the teacher thinking, "Hey, Doctor/ Manager/ IAS officer... idhar sab ek samaan. Here, you gotta dance to my tunes."

I'm sure Nivedita will learn to live with the system - like I did. And millions of other kids have. But is the objective of schooling to merely survive, or to thrive? Wish someone had the answers... or at least started asking the question!

4 comments:

  1. Hi,

    Really, these days schooling seems to be more mandatory phase rather then being one foundation series. Apparently, even parents perform their duty by providing the best school in locality. But that the only thing probably they can do when it comes to choice for school. Its unlike the flat buying where we can make the interiors as per our taste. Surprisingly, even kids get exposed to proffesionlism in schools. They get to know that they need to follow 'Teacher-is always-right' tradition, which later would be replaced by 'Boss-is-always-right' attitude.

    However I feel that bombay schools are much much better than if you compare them with schools in delhi or north india. However the school system as a whole needs a radical change...but i wonder how many of us would like to take this experiment with our own babies.

    -tripti

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  2. Digressing from the subject a bit. One thing - out of so many other things - which cripples Indian education system is its overdependence on memory-based grading system. It is all about how much you can memorise and store it in your hard-disk(read brain). This doesnt add a bit to the creativity side. No wonder we dont have many innovative minds.

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  3. Yes, school book do look a lot better... but i think they've all gone down on the content bit.

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  4. yeah about the school bag and the load tiny toads carry! no the question is not that, the question really is where is the heart? the policy makers, the educators, the teachers, and the parents. . what do we teach them? do we teach them anything except carrying load? mental and physical? why do we do that. 6000 odd schools rashmi said . . what are we passing genereation after generation? no we need to think about it and more importantly we need to do something about it. . we can do things only when we put our hearts to it. .

    think with the heart

    do we ?

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